


WHAT!?? Girl!?

by TehanuFromEarthsea



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Comedy Angst, F/M, Kidnapped by Pirates, Romantic Comedy, Space Pirates, The First Order is not ready for you, Why are the arseholes in charge of everything in EVERY galaxy?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-16
Updated: 2017-06-07
Packaged: 2018-10-19 19:37:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 36
Words: 46,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10646646
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TehanuFromEarthsea/pseuds/TehanuFromEarthsea
Summary: Imagine meeting Kylo Ren....What,memeeting Kylo Ren?Well, of course everyone else would be falling about the room wetting their pants with terror because it’s KYLO REN!Except me.Because I don’t speak a word of anyone’s language, I have no idea who he is or what’s going on. I’ve spent a year being dragged around the Galaxy by alien space pirates who have basically ignored me since the day they kidnapped me, and instead of having the adventure of a lifetime, I’m as pissed as fuck because I’ve seen nothing more than the inside of half a dozen cells on various spaceships which I’m not allowed to explore. The frustration is killing me.And then this guy in black shows up. And next thing I know there’s a voice in my head and I can understand every word. And he understands me.I have 50,000 questions. He can’t get a word in edgewise because I haven’t had a conversation for two years.*       *          *         *





	1. Chapter 1

 

_Is he human?_

_Is he human?_

_Is he human?_

I can think of nothing else when he appears, a tall black figure in an insect-dogface mask. There’s a stir of movement among the white lobster-armour soldiers who invaded our ship and herded us into theirs at blaster-point. They’re all snapping to attention, so this new guy is somebody important.

Are they human, any of them? Their arms, their knees, bend in all the right places. This new ship we’re in…smells human. 

The person - or thing - in black speaks to my ex-crewmates in a voice that sounds like gravel. Judging by their flattened neck-frills and lowered heads, they’re afraid of him. Whatever they’ve said in reply, the tall creature seems displeased. He extends a hand towards them.

Is that a _human_ hand? I’m riveted by the sight of it. Surely under those black gauntlets there are human fingers, an opposable thumb. 

Then one by one the aliens I’ve been travelling with scream and crumple to the floor, clutching their heads and sensory-organ clusters as though their interrogator has death rays in his fingers.

Not entirely human, then. 

Okay, he’s coming this way. Clearly that costume is not designed to be friendly but hey, the enemy of my enemy is my friend, right? He - or it -  stalks over to where I’ve wedged myself against a bulkhead, as far as possible from my ex-crewmates and from the white lobster-soldiers.

He stops in front of me and tilts down to look at me. I straighten up to see if I can catch sight of the eyes under the insect gleam of the black eyepieces.

“……………..?” he asks. The helmet seems to distort his voice.

“I don’t understand you,” I say, and wait, still hopeful. Maybe he speaks more than one language. Mine, even. 

I think I hear a sigh, distorted by the helmet. 

Oh no, the hand! Here comes the hand! I go cross-eyed staring at that black glove inches from my face, bracing myself. I haven’t lived a life where torture is commonplace.

Instead it feels…weird. Rather like a medical examination. Something inserted where it isn’t expected, or welcome. Like a speculum, only inside my head. But it’s not outright painful. 

Then to my surprise I hear a voice. It’s in my head. And I can understand it.

_Tell me about your ship._

_Is that you?_ I think.

Tell me about your ship.

_That is you! You did that! You just talked to me! Can you hear me?_

_Yes. Tell me about…_

_You understood me!_

Almost crying with relief, I step forward and grab his arm like a drowning swimmer. Something like an electric shock seems to pass between us. He jerks his arm out of my grasp. 

_Sorry! Sorry. It’s just that….I haven’t talked to anyone for months. How can you understand me? Are you human?_

_Just answer the question,_ he says, and the voice in my head feels somehow irritable. He stands staring at me. If I can read his body language at all inside the stiff costume that swathes every inch of him, I’d say he’s puzzled, too.

 _This doesn’t hurt you?_ he asks, and waves his fingers near my temples. The strange, stretched-rubber-band sensation in my head increases. Odd, but not painful.

_Talking in my head like this? No. Though I’d stick my hand in a fire if it meant I could talk to someone. Who are you? Are you human? Where are we? Who are those white lobster soldier guys?_

_I’m asking the questions, not you._ Definitely irritated.

 _Okay, ask! Anything._ I wait. A one-sided conversation is so much better than none at all. I’ll take anything I can get. Again, he pauses as though something has puzzled him.

 _What’s your name?_ I ask, since we seem to have ground to a halt already.

 _If you don’t shut up, I’m going to hurt you,_ he says, pointing a finger at me.

But my thoughts aren’t so obedient. Not with months of pent-up words inside me. _Sorry. I was just being polite. I expect you want to know about my crewmates and what we were doing?_

He nods.

_They kidnapped me. I think they’re pirates but I can’t tell because I don’t understand their language and they don’t understand mine. We don’t talk._

_What makes you say they’re pirates?_

I describe the way the ship seemed to raid places or fight other ships. Afterwards I was usually given a lot of work sorting and repackaging and re-labelling whatever they’d taken, presumably so it could be sold. We also seemed to be on the run - the pirates had trained me to watch some kind of scanning device for them. I was meant to alert them when it picked up certain signals, and sometimes when I did, all hell broke loose. 

_What are they stealing?_

_Um. Sort of metal cylinders, one time. Boxes, that had to be packed in bigger boxes. I don’t know._

_Weapons?_

_Ah. Maybe. Can you see them if I make a picture in my head?_

He doesn’t say anything, but I have an extraordinary sensation as though he is standing next to me inside my head while we both look at an open box of machinery. He seems pleased. I catch a thought from him: what I’ve said tallies with what the others revealed.

_Show me the route you took._

_I’m not even sure I know this galaxy._

_Where are you from?_ he asks, beginning to sound irritated again.

 _I don’t know. Here._ I picture the galaxy I know. _Somewhere about two-thirds of the way out from the middle._

 _Where did you come from? Tell me!_ He leans in closer, and the pressure in my head increases as though somebody is shoving doors open looking for something. 

Something that isn’t there. _We don’t have interstellar travel. So we don’t have space_ ** _maps!_** I think, exasperated. _Well, maybe astronomers do, but I’m not an astronomer. I do have quite a good map of the Kepler Range, but it hasn’t come in terribly useful lately._

I think longingly of the beautiful mountains I never reached. I might willingly have traded them for a view of alien worlds, but as it is, I’m lucky if the aliens let me anywhere near a viewport. I haven’t seen jack shit.

They kidnapped me while I was hiking on my home planet. I saw a fireball, ran off the trail to find out what it was, hoping to find a meteorite. It would be something amazing to take home as a souvenir. When I arrived at the point of impact, I only had time to think, “Wow, is that one of the military’s latest stealth planes? How bizarre! I didn’t know they were so big!” before the unmistakably not-human crew jumped out and I realised my mistake. 

They took me as their souvenir instead. And like many souvenirs picked up on holiday, they lost interest in me almost right away. 

Speaking of losing interest, my internal monologue seems to have pissed off my interrogator. Maybe he’s not interested in mountains, or aliens, or the particular aliens I’ve been landed with. I don’t blame him. They’re jerks.

I feel him start to withdraw from my mind. 

I think I’ll die if I have to live without speech again. Strange as it is to have an alien presence inside my head, I don’t want to be alone again. 

_No no, don’t go!_

As he pulls out of my head, there’s a hitch; some part of him registers puzzlement and curiosity, and it snags against me. I’m caught in an undertow that carries me with him.

He pulls away again, but it’s too late. Now I’m in his head.

It’s amazing. Like being in a house that’s on fire during an earthquake. Everything is dangerously in motion and his anger and shock are only part of the smoke that’s obscuring everything.  

_Get out!_

Did I say I’d stick my hand in a fire if it meant I could keep talking? I don’t know what I’m doing, but I hang in there with everything I’ve got. 

 _Don’t leave! Don’t leave me with them_! I point over to my pirate buddies, cowering under the muzzles of their guards’ blasters. They chitter and snap their claws at me, no doubt guessing I’m selling them out for thirty seconds of somebody’s undivided attention. 

Attention from this nuclear meltdown of a person who’s throwing me out of his head like I’m a stray cat that’s snuck in to steal the butter.

But he doesn’t break the connection. I can still hear his words in my head.

_You have a problem with them?_

_They’re morons! They’ve got a whole galaxy to explore, and all they do when they’re not hassling people is gamble and watch sport!_

His thoughts in my head sound snarky. _Maybe you should try joining in_. 

 _I don’t have the status,_ I snarl. _Look at them. They have to do a five minute dance every time they see each other to remind themselves of their pecking order._ I demonstrate my ex-crewmates’ ridiculous bobbing and neck-stretching ritual. They’re all standing with their heads canted at identical angles. When they see me do the status dance, they hiss and click their claws at me, the bastards. Turning on them, I put my hands up to my neck, fingers splayed, and mimic their “I’m boss” gesture. The captain puffs up his neck frill furiously in return. _Oh boy, now they’ll really clobber me._

 _Nobody likes a show-off,_ says my questioner, but there’s a hint of amusement in his thought.

_Sure. Fine. But look, I’m sick of being useless! They’ve been  too lazy to teach me your language, so I haven’t met anybody I can talk to. I’ve been with them for months, and I’m dying to see and learn things, but they won’t let me!_

Perhaps he’s used to people begging for mercy or bullshitting about how useful they’ll be if he spares their life. Maybe me and my whining are enough of a novelty to make him curious.

 _I’ll talk to you later,_ he says. He seems tired. Keeping up this kind of telepathy must be hard work. Obviously he’s doing all the heavy lifting, since I’m not telepathic. 

Whatever is connecting us breaks off and I’m alone in my head again. It’s awful.

He barks an order to the soldiers in white, and they herd the pirates out of the room. Dear lord, I hope I never see their sorry arses again. I’m not racist, but they smell like cockroaches, the lot of them. 

Another order from the Man in Black, and a couple of soldiers come to escort me in another direction. A jab from a blaster muzzle discourages me from looking back over my shoulder to see where the boss has gone. We go down a number of clean, shiny grey corridors and stop outside what looks like a detention area. The soldiers consult. The downturned mouth-slits in their pudgy white helmets make them look like depressed larvae.

“Hey sad clown. Turn that frown upside down,” I say to the nearest. 

“…………….,” he says, and waves his blaster at me.

A minute later I’m in a cell. It’s clean and the walls are too hard to mark, so for once I’m spared the usual alien dick pic graffiti from previous inhabitants.  I’ve seen many dick pics in my galactic travels and believe me, it hasn’t been a highlight.

 

 


	2. She Didn't Tell him Anything.

The girl hasn’t told him enough to make her worth keeping. All she’s done is corroborate the information he’s already pried out of her insect crewmates, who look to him like a frilly version of the Kibnon.

He’s got all the evidence he needs. The Kibnon and their allies have been playing both sides against the middle, hoping to profit from their connections with the First Order while plundering their fragile trade routes. No doubt they’ve been selling information. It would be satisfying to have that confirmed, but a girl who doesn’t speak Basic is hardly the informant he needs.

Kylo returns to his quarters on the Finalizer. His long stride is maybe a fraction slower than usual. It’s been a tiring afternoon.

_I won’t have the girl spaced just yet. I may have missed something._

Once in his quarters, he turns the lighting up a fraction, pulls off his helmet, and sits down to write a report for Hux. _Today’s interrogations confirm our suspicions. This ship is part of a loose network of Kibnon-allied ships that appear to be willing trade partners, but are clearly using their privileged knowledge of our operations to attack our supply routes...._

Kylo pushes back his chair. His desk is cramped, for someone with his long legs. Nothing about the room is particularly comfortable. The dim light shines on the dull black leather of the one couch, the hard gleam of the floors. His mind wanders.

_How was she able to get into my head? If she has the Force, surely I would have sensed it!_

Or maybe not. His training is far from complete, as Snoke is all too willing to remind him. Well, he can question her further, when he’s had time to recuperate his powers. It took some effort to crack into her crewmates’ squirmy and unwilling minds. Not for the first time, he wishes there was a mental equivalent of bleach.

Not the girl though. When he’d tried to read her mind, she rolled out the welcome mat so fast he almost tripped over it.

_What does she mean, fawning over me like that?_

Only she hadn’t fawned. She’d grabbed him, making a demand he could read in her eyes as well as her head.

_Save me. Get me out of here!_

He stretches, cracking his shoulder muscles, and pushes his hands through his thick hair. His scalp is itchy after a day spent wearing his helmet. His lips form a soft sound. “Pah!”

Kylo Ren has many powers. So far as he is aware, saving other people is not among them.

*        *          *


	3. When in Doubt, Sleep

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The dreaded interrogation chair...even a very strong imagination won't get you out of that.
> 
>  
> 
> * * *

I spend a night tossing and turning in my comfy new cell which has the usual view. I guess it must be “day” (though how would you decide that in space? How long are these “days?” Does everyone in space have the same day?) when the lights come up. Shortly afterwards there’s noise: guards making clashing noises as they march with their booted feet down the corridor outside. I rush to the small barred opening in my cell door but can’t see much. Other inmates are pounding and shrieking in their various voices and languages. The creature to my right sounds like a vacuum cleaner in distress. 

A soldier passes, a hinged plate in my door opens, and a bowl of mush appears. So that’s the cause of all the excitement. Not the most interesting food I’ve ever shoved in my mouth but judging by the racket outside, it may be the highlight of my day.

It’s a relief to know they’re not going to starve me to death. They’ll just leave me to my old enemy and constant companion during this past year, boredom.

Some time later though, two guards open the door and sign for me to walk with them. We pass down more clean, unmemorable corridors (how do people find their way? Some kind of ship-localised GPS? Do they have HUD maps in their helmets?) before I’m escorted into a room that is empty except for what looks like a reclining dentist’s chair and a floating ball with flexible arms that end in an array of picks, drills and syringe-like attachments. I run my tongue around my teeth reflexively looking for decay before realising I’m unlikely to be here for the good of my health.

“……. …… ……..” One of the guards points at the chair with his blaster. My imaginary self overpowers him, takes his blaster, shoots the other one and runs off down the corridor on the way to take over the ship and fly home. It’s hella exciting!

In reality I sit on the chair. There are clamps which lock themselves automatically over my wrists and ankles. The guards leave, shutting the heavy door behind them.

I stare at the floating ball. It has a red light on it which obsesses me. Some kind of standby light? What will that thing do when it’s fully switched on? It looks like an torture device. Why would a race of mind-reading freaks need to interrogate me with any device? And why me, the one person in this galaxy who has the least clue what is going on?

I wrack my brain, but I can’t come up with any nuggets of useful information. The light on the ball starts to blur and double up, and my eyelids grow heavy. I haven’t slept properly in days. Nothing happens for a long time. 

Apparently some people can fall asleep as a response to fear. It turns out I’m one of those people. 

* * *


	4. So You Want to Join the First Order?

The heavy door to the interrogation room sighs open. The girl is asleep, her face a brown blur within a long tangle of black hair splayed across headrest of the interrogation chair. He pauses at the unusual sight. People _don’t_ sleep when Kylo Ren is around. The lights come up and she wakes with a start. Her eyes travel to the interrogation probe then back to his face. She looks…pleased?

Yes, pleased. She’s even doing a cramped little hand-wave from under the braces that confine her. “Hello,” she says, in Kibnon. Literally, “My mandibles soften towards your carapace”.

What is _wrong_ with her?

He doesn’t reply, just moves to where he can stare down at her. She stares back, looking perplexed.

“Hello?” she repeats aloud.

Once he’s interrogated somebody, it’s not unusual to randomly pick up their thoughts. In her case, it’s difficult to block them out.

_Did I pronounce that wrong? Isn’t he going to talk? What is the problem? Is he just here to torture me? Why would anyone do that? Why not just ask me something?_

Clearly her people aren’t at war, or she wouldn’t be asking those questions. Naivety like this makes him want to slap her. It’s almost insulting, when the Galaxy is locked in such a deadly struggle.

Suppressing a sigh, he reaches into her mind with the Force.

She jumps at it like a snapfish taking a baited hook.

_Hi! I’m so glad you’re here! What’s going on? Why am I here?_

_Tell me about your world,_ he asks, fending off the flood of questions. And it is a flood. Usually when the Force takes him into a person’s mind, it feels like he’s chipping information out of solid rock, blow by blow. In her case, it’s more like being carried along by a stream, battered by her thoughts. They rush through the house that is her mind, with her as a helpful tour guide splashing along beside him. She opens doors and points things out to him, chattering away, unperturbed.

_Yes, that’s where I live, this is my world, icy poles, warm equator, lots of oceans....we have one big moon to keep things stable - that’s what scientists figure happened anyway. That big moon kept our world steady and gave us tides...it helped life to develop here. Does that happen elsewhere? Oh, that’s my city, that’s our view of the harbour on a sunny day, oh look, that’s my brother there! He sails…it’s often windy. Ugh, my room. It’s so small, it’s difficult to keep tidy. My cat. She sleeps a lot. Yes of course we have a government, and so does everyone else…we have lots of countries, they’re all different… but look, see the beautiful mountains inland? I was going to climb them, but I never got there… Where are you from? Do you have a home planet? More than one planet? A favourite planet? What’s it like?_

Kylo’s grinding his teeth. It’s not clear who’s getting interrogated here.

_You say you don’t have space travel. Have you been visited by space travellers?_

She is still for a moment, but there is one thought he can read: _When a more advanced civilisation contacts a more primitive one, it doesn’t go well for the primitive one._

“No,” she says aloud, and goes on silently, _Not as far as anyone knows. Once the pirates fixed the ship, we left, and I don’t think they made contact with anyone else on my planet._

So. There’s a liveable, exploitable world, unknown to Galactic history, hidden from all its political factions. A perfect hidden base. She’s just betrayed her planet.

_Have I?_ she says. _Maybe not. We’ve gone about as far as we can go on our world. Maybe we’ll end up getting more than we give._

Kylo leans in closer. _Dream on, little dreamer. We will find you, and we will crush you._

She sighs. _So hostile. Why is everybody like this?_ Then her face changes, and she’s examining his mask with minute attention as though she hopes to see through it. _No seriously, **why** so hostile?_

Her curiosity scratches at him, looking for a way in. He shouldn’t let her…

Next moment, she’s in his head again, trying to answer her own question.

_Your brain is on fire. No wonder you’re angry! I’d be angry too._

Oddly enough, she sounds sympathetic, and he wonders what she’s seeing exactly.

_Hey, zowie! How do you do this? This is so cool! Look at all this cool stuff!_

His thoughts are churning between shock and annoyance, and she mentally steadies herself by grabbing the only solid thing she can find - which is Kylo’s own consciousness. It’s the weirdest sensation. He’s used to Snoke being in his head, and that isn’t pleasant at all. The girl, though…seems to lean on him, looking around with her damnable curiosity running at full bore. It’s been years since he’s felt so…seen.

_You seem kind of lonely, you know?_

He hates introspection and he certainly doesn’t welcome it from her. _I’m surrounded by thousands of people and we’re all working towards a common goal. I don’t have time to be lonely._

_Okay, if you say you like it here, fine. But please tell me this place isn’t run by dickheads. The pirate ship was bad enough. Their technology was great and all, but they’re basically the same kind of wankers running things that I could meet back home any day._

Her thoughts are running in an uncomfortably close parallel to his own. The First Order does disappoint him far too often, and for exactly the reasons she gives. He can’t allow her to run around any longer in his head like a bad case of internal headlice.

_Get out, you little parasite_ , he says. He can still hear her thoughts, though.

_There’s really no need to be so aggro about everything. I’d help you if I could. Find my planet, and then see what we can do for you._

_You’d sell out your entire planet for a chance to get home, wouldn’t you?_

He can see past the chatter in her mind. Her homesickness rips a black hole through the fabric of her being. In war, people always have those losses: missing persons, things left behind, lives thrown away. The abduction that cut her life in half is the same kind of thing. Painful to look at. There’s no need for him to see it, and he leaves it alone.

_If you find my planet, you’ll open a door,_ she says fiercely. _Maybe the door we need. Some of my people were stone age warriors, not long ago. We tattooed star maps on our backs so we could steer across the widest ocean. When the settlers came with guns, they thought they’d crush us. But we learned to use their weapons. We survived._

It’s the first time he’s seen her teeth. She’s smiling. Not happily, but simply in wonder at her own history. _A lot of people died. But don’t forget, doors open two ways._

_You’re crazy_ , he tells her. _You have no idea how small you really are._

_Well, give me a chance to SEE something then. Show me how much better you are, you people._ She’s looking up at him, not defiantly, but full of excitement, as though it is a perfectly reasonable proposition. _Go on, I dare you. Show me how good you really are._

He’s wasting time here. He makes a last attempt to see if there’s anything of value in her mind. This time he finds something he didn’t notice before: Some kind of knowledge or ability. He tries to get a better look at it but it’s impermeable, or rather, what he sees with the Force makes no sense to him at all. It’s alien.

_From my point of view, you’re the alien,_ she pipes up. _Or are you human?_

_Yes!_ he says, finally goaded into answering.

_Then how can you read my mind? How did you get into space? Were your ancestors abducted from our planet?_

_We all come from somewhere,_ he said. _I’m not here for a debate on human origins._

_Well, no, but_ — Her curiosity comes back up to full boil.

_You probably come from the same place as us,_ he snaps.

That little morsel of information is like red meat to a rathtar, and she seizes on it. _No, we’ve always been there. If you’re human, then you come from my planet. Not the other way round!_

_Every human planet has an origin myth claiming that they’re the true ancestors of all humans in the galaxy. None of them are true._

_Yeah? Do they have the fossils to prove it?_

_Fossils?_

_Yeah_! Her restraints rattle as she tries to gesture in her excitement. She looks at them distractedly for a second as though she can’t remember why they’re there. _So, fossils, let me show you…_

The torrent of knowledge again. Dear Maker, if he ever tries to actively pry information out of her he’ll probably drown in it. She’s precise though: this is a highly organised tour she’s giving him. She flicks the images into his consciousness, each building context for the next. Layers of rock, and bones. _Our nearest relatives. Our most recent common ancestor. Here’s how the skeletons change and the forms diverge over time, and then we start to see tools. Here are the branches that die out. Then there’s us and the artefacts that define us, what they say about us, and how they change over time…_

Like everyone in the galaxy, Kylo has at some time heard half a dozen legends and crackpot theories about where people come from. He’s heard nothing like this: detailed, documented, cross-referenced knowledge, as solid as bricks in a wall. She’s even held fossils in her own hands: a memory that fills her with awe and excitement even now.

_Yes, I studied it. I thought I might make it my career once,_ she fills in. Not that he’s asked.

The human history he knows goes back thousands of years. Hers goes back millions.

_Hey! Hey! Hey! Listen —_

“WHAT!” he roars aloud. It’s one word of Basic she understands, anyway.

_Sorry. You seemed distracted. Look, I just want to ask one thing._

_ONE thing? Kriff it, if only “one thing” were enough to make you shut up!_

_Can you get somebody to teach me your language? You could, couldn’t you? I’ve seen how people behave around you. You’re somebody important. You could make them do it! Then I could work, I could be useful! Wait and see, you’ll be glad you did it!_

_Yes, I am somebody important,_ he says sarcastically. His mind feels like it’s getting stabbed to pieces with exclamation marks.

_Sorry. I didn’t know. I won’t waste your time. But get somebody to teach me your language, and you won’t regret it._

He rests his hands on either side of the chair and leans over her, staring down. She is not intimidated. In fact he can still hear her questions still simmering away. _What does he look like under that helmet?_

_So you want to join the First Order? he asks._

_Is that what you’re called? Yes. But I’ll have to learn…”_

_Our language. Yes. There are modules on the Finalizer that can train you._  He pushes himself away before he can be hooked in by the second smile she’s given him. It’s hungry and hopeful, and he has no time for that kind of thing.

As he walks back to his room his fingers drum an agitated pattern against his thighs. _What kind of interrogation was that? But still, I learned something! A fully developed, unexploited world unknown to everyone. Such potential for a secret base!_ Kylo smiles. How long since the girl was kidnapped? Has news of the planet spread? Are other pirates already settling in to their new hiding place?

Can the First Order move in before news of its existence spread any further?

He makes a call. “What have you done with the pirates we captured yesterday?”

“Spaced, sir.”

Kriff it. Now how is he going to find the place?


	5. An Undocumented Alien

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I'm an undocumented alien. But now they're going to document me! That'll make everything better.
> 
>  
> 
> * * *

My questioner leaves abruptly in a sweep of fluttering black fabric tail-ends. Quite dramatic, that one. I suppose he’s learned all he needs to, and said all he’s going to say.

I let out a long breath. It’s been a pretty tense interview, though I was too buoyed up with excitement to notice while it was going on. _He as good as said I would get training! I’ll be able to talk to people! I’ll finally learn all about this galactic society I’m in!_

This is my best day in a long while.

Time passes, and I start to feel some doubts. I’m still strapped to the chair, and the thing I can only think of as an interrogation droid is still watching me with its tiny red eye. I’m starting to click my teeth with nerves when a pair of white-armoured soldiers come to unstrap me and herd me out the door.

We’re not in such a hurry this time. When I realise they’ve kept their weapons holstered, I could just about skip for joy. It’s a sign! I prefer to think they’re guides, rather than guards. I square my shoulders and step out happily between them.

They match me stride for stride. They must be human, I decide. Knees, elbows, everything works the same way. Or could they be androids, human-copying robots? Or even aliens in human suits? Maybe there’s some tentacley thing swimming inside each bucket-like helmet, controlling artificial limbs?

It would _still_ suggest that looking human is very important in this society. That in itself is encouraging. I might be closer to the top of the pecking order than I think.

We stop for a moment, waiting for a lift. One of the soldiers burps, ridiculously magnified by his helmet’s crackly voice unit. The other soldier snaps his head around and so do I, clapping my hand over my mouth to stop myself from laughing. I can tell the other soldier is struggling not to react.

It’s such a human moment. My doubts vanish. These are my peeps.

“Hi, humans!” I say brightly. It’s not a word in their language, and they both turn to give me the _other_ look. The one that says, “You’re not one of us”. Even under their helmets, I can tell.

“Just you wait,” I say. “I will be.”

The lift arrives and we are carried up to some kind of administrative area. And here are the humans! Half a dozen men and women of young to middle age, all different races, neatly dressed in close-fitting tunics and pants. I just want to hug them all so badly! I restrain myself to smiling and shaking hands with the two women that come to guide me through the next stage.

They pull away and look a bit shocked, to be honest. I guess it’s a very formal society where you don’t touch strangers. I hope I haven’t really put my foot in it.

“Hey people, I’m so glad to see you,” I say, still smiling.

Their eyes keep flicking away from me and I shouldn’t keep smiling at them, but I can’t stop. They lead me over to where I’m measured and weighed and imaged and retinal scanned. I’m an undocumented alien, and they’re documenting me. Whoever they are, soon I’ll be one of them!

They fix a wristband to my wrist, heavy with technology I’m itching to examine. And then I’m escorted out to begin my new life learning how to do whatever it is they do here.

I wonder what they do here?


	6. Even the Furniture Hates Him

Kylo kicks at a chair in his fury. “I should have been asked!”

“How were we to know you hadn’t finished with them?” asks Hux, twirling gently around in his own chair to watch Kylo’s progress around the room. “The interrogation was over as far as my men were aware. In fact you ordered them…let me see, the exact words were, ‘Get rid of them’.”

“I did not give orders for them to be spaced,” says Kylo, but under his helmet he’s biting his lip. 

Hux’s eyes narrow, sensing a weak point. “Perhaps you should have been more precise.” He gives his chair another gentle spin and returns to the attack. “If you’d made a thorough interrogation the first time, we wouldn’t be in this situation.”

Kylo’s circuit around Hux’s ready room has brought him in contact with the unfortunate chair again. He kicks it out of the way. This time it ricochets off the nearest wall and comes spinning back towards him as though possessed. He draws his lightsaber and slices it in two. 

Hux watches the two halves sag to the floor and makes a tiny disappointed click with his tongue. Of the two men, it is the one without the mask who shows the least expression. Kylo is still standing over the ruin of the chair, breathing as though he’s lifted a heavy weight.

Hux inspects a fingernail. “The girl, though. You still have her?”

“She doesn’t know the way back. Her people are ignorant. They’ve never had contact with any galactic government.”

“Well, I agree it sounds like it would make an ideal base. When we start to expand our operations it’d be a great advantage to build within a human colony world that already has some kind of industrial base we can use.” Hux picks delicately at something under one of his nails and flicks it away. Kylo snaps his cloak away from any possible contact with Hux’s lint. Hux waits, but when Kylo has nothing to add, he seems to tire of tormenting him. “Very well. You did get us some good leads on this pirate network. Any more of them that we catch will be brought to you for questioning. Obviously we don’t want the location of this place to get around any further than it may have already.”

“See to it,” says Kylo, trying to close on a vaguely threatening note. But as usual Hux seems to have sucked the plasma out of his drive. Hux merely jerks his chin up slightly, and there’s nothing Kylo can do except leave.

The Finalizer’s identical grey corridors seem insufferable. Kylo heads towards his training room to blow off steam. He’s already fingering the hilt of his lightsaber. Approaching stormtroopers and crew personnel give him an even wider berth than usual.

At the training room, Kylo dials up a holochallenge, and starts working through the forms of combat. The fabric of his armour is a miracle really the way, it wicks away sweat and heat, but still he works until he’s soaked and the saber weighs heavy in his hand. The costume feels constricting on muscles that have become pumped with effort.

Once he’s returned to his quarters, downed a litre of water and spent some time in the refresher, he is almost peaceable. But something is still nagging him. Hux has said, “human colony world”. The girl doesn’t believe her world is any such thing, and her belief is as solid as the rock strata she’s shown him in such detail. 

Hux is so irritatingly right about so many things. If he’s wrong about this, though, then it’s still Kylo’s little secret: the human origin world. Even if they never find it, it's something he knows and Hux doesn't.


	7. Notice me, Senpai

All my life I’ve had vague plans to learn some other language, usually whatever they speak in the latest romantic drama series I’ve watched. I’ve never had time to actually do anything about it.

Now I do, and I love it. Systems, data, the alien rhythm of words themselves, and this crazy wild technology to help me study it. I wonder if they’re feeding me some brain plasticity drug to help me learn? Anyway, I’m spending five hours a day at these consoles they have, headphones on, next to a couple of dozen others, all much younger than me. They already know this language, which is called Basic, so they’re studying other things.

They call us cadets. I’m issued with new clothes, the same grey tunic and pants as most other people. If I ever get home I’ll write to the people who made the hiking gear I’ve been wearing until now. “The first 500 km are the hardest,” is their logo, usually displayed over picture of a muddy boot on the end of a tanned, muscular (but hairless!) leg. The boot is firmly planted on a rock, and in the background there is a Landscape moodily lit by Weather. Two things I haven’t seen in months (along with unshaven legs).

“The next 500 lightyears haven’t been easy either, but your all-weather gear has survived the challenge with flying colours,” I’ll write. “Your products have exceeded all my expectations.” I’ll live on product endorsements for the rest of my life.

A woman called Lieutenant Sala is in charge of me and the other students. She has an angular face, so white that I can’t imagine she’s ever seen the sun, and she wears her thin brown hair twisted up into a feeble little bun. She shows me how my hair must be tied up, always, unless I’m asleep. The First Order is always tidy, she says. Her answer to most things is, “This is the way it’s done in the First Order”.

“Is there a Second Order?”

“There’s the New Republic,” she says, and her lip curls. “And the faithless unaligned worlds, and the filthy aliens.” I guess I was wrong in thinking the First Order isn’t racist. They’re just not racist against _me._ Nice one.

“Are we in danger?” I ask.

“Soon, we will be in _control,_ ” she says, with a tight little smile.

So, we’re at war, or about to be. If I’m going to start wearing those shiny new Master Race boots, I’d better get studying.

Afternoons are spent learning the basics of shipboard life. Of course I’ll have to start on menial work, like anyone coming to a new country. And this ship _is_ a new country.

Along with the other cadets, I’m taught how to work in the big kitchens (mostly rehydrating food), how to re-pack boxes (I get a gold star for that one!), how to work with the droids in the hydroponics halls, and then, as my language improves, how to maintain and repair the droids themselves.

The sight and smell of the hydroponic halls just about overwhelms me the first time. So green! All of us cadets beg to work there again. I’m not the only one who pauses to stroke the leaves, bends down to sniff them. We see each other doing it and exchange smiles.

“How long since you were last planetside?” we ask each other.

“These are from my home planet,” says another, his eyes going soft for a moment.

Lt Sala hurries over. “Leave the plants alone.”

Whatever the homework is, I’ll do more. I’ve been assigned a little grey cabin of my own, and I have unlimited writing materials, so I have every surface covered in paper; “flimsies” as they’re called here. Big trees of verbs, marching columns of adjectives, stacks of nouns. Soon I’ll run out of space but that’s okay, I’ve got the first tranche memorised already.

This ship is enormous! I wonder if they built it in space. Could such a big thing lift off from a planet’s surface? I’m getting sore feet and sore legs from walking around so much of it, but it’s a good kind of sore.

I always keep an eye out for the man (I’m 90% sure he’s a man) who saved me. We don’t have a lot of contact with the officer class, who inhabit the decks somewhere above us. But I’ve seen him around. He doesn’t speak in my head again, so I can’t say hello. I wave, though, not too obviously, if he looks my way. He doesn’t wave back. He can’t have forgotten me already!

Then I see him at one of the weekly pep rallies, when we have to assemble alongside thousands of stormtroopers and listen to a man called General Hux.

I haven’t warmed to General Hux. But then I spot the mysterious stranger next to him. I could hardly miss him: a tall faceless black figure, strangely medieval-looking among all the shiny armour and crisp uniforms.

I nudge Matun Plaw, the cadet beside me. “Who’s he name? Named, I mean?”

“Shh. That’s Kylo Ren. If you see him headed in your direction, go the other way.”

“Why?”

Lt Sala raps me on the back of the head to shut me up. What am I, five years old?

_Kylo Ren, Kylo Ren,_ I chant silently in my mind, my eyes fixed on the distant figure. Did he turn his head just now?

_Kylo Ren! Kylo Ren! Kylo Ren!_


	8. Standing out in a crowd

He’s standing at Hux’s shoulder with the Finalizer’s crew ranked neatly before them, black and grey and white. Hux’s motivational speeches are a prime opportunity to search for dissent. Maker knows, Hux’s speeches do nothing to inspire Kylo’s loyalty.

He reaches out with the Force, scanning for signs of resistance. Seen through the Force, the troops appear as a soupy haze with occasional sparks of enthusiasm. Plus one mind that sticks out like a jar of flowering weeds in a hydroponic farm.

_Kylo Ren! Kylo Ren! Kylo R — Hello! Is this you? I can see you up the front there. How are you? Keeping well?_

Her mind’s a tractor beam. The merest touch of the Force, and she’s at him again.

_Hello?_

He thinks he can pick her out of the line-up of grey-clad cadets standing to attention at the back of the rally. _You should be listening to your leader._

_Oh, I am!_

_What do you think?_ he asks, against his better judgement.

 _He’s very… committed to his beliefs._ She’s trying to hide the rest of her thoughts but it’s pointless, they’re as clear as a bell. _He’s a raving nutter, and I don’t believe a word he says._

 _I heard that,_ he says.

_Yes, but the way I look at it, everything is a learning opportunity. Including General Hux’s speeches. Oh, I’ve learned so much since I came here. They made me a cadet! I can never thank you enough! I was just dying before…_

She’s so freaking happy. It’s like being slobbered on by a pet.

_I heard that. Listen, you. You made me happy, and I’m still happy. I don’t know why that makes you so upset. Maybe you could try just accepting it._

Kylo breaks the connection. He’s _not_ going to put up with some nobody calling him her “fairy godfather”, whatever that is.

That whole conversation should be impossible unless she is Force sensitive, yet he hasn’t sensed a shred of Force about her.

When she grabbed him that first time, he’d felt the marks of her grip on his wrist for the rest of the day. Ever since then, he’s often felt her presence when he’s using the Force to scan the people around him. Most minds on the Finalizer are woven from the same thread. All together they form a sturdy grey cloth of unanimity. But there are always a few misfits. That girl is one. She trails her mental signature loudly behind her, a colourful scrawl breaking the regular patterns of First Order thought. He shouldn’t reach out to it, he shouldn’t! It’s like picking a hangnail to see if it’s still there. It always is, and it’s only going to cause pain.

Whenever she catches sight of him, her eyes light up.

Kylo knows perfectly well that there are hundreds of women, and men for that matter, obsessed with him. Poor tortured souls, they slink after him hoping he’ll notice them. But he hasn’t met anyone that is breezily happy to see him and thinks it’s perfectly natural to say so.

The Force can make a connection, but as far as he knows, it shouldn’t slide so easily into this: quicksilver, confident, vivid speech.

He does not know enough. He needs to talk to Snoke.

Once the rally is over — his conversation with the girl being the only point of interest in the whole deadly hour of it — Kylo returns to his room and punches in the codes that will connect him to Snoke. A message returns a few minutes later directing him to wait in the audience holochamber.

Snoke’s image snaps on as soon as Kylo arrives. He’s lounging back in his throne with his chin in one hand. “Speak, my apprentice.”

“I’m sorry to trouble you for a small thing, but I interrogated a girl…”

 _“What_ girl?” says Snoke, leaning forward suddenly.

“A strange girl. From a planet unknown to us, that knows nothing of us.”

“Is she… what do you sense about her?”

“Maybe it’s nothing…except she is too easy to read. And when I stopped using the Force to interrogate her, she somehow kept the contact anyway.”

“So you say she has the Force?”

“No. I detected nothing. But telepathy is unknown among her people.”

Snoke seems to stare through him. At last he says, “It is probably of no significance. But….” He pauses for a very long time. Kylo can read nothing in his face. At last he says, “Keep an eye on her.”


	9. Homesick

I’m on windows, my favourite thing. I have a little tool for checking airtight seals. We’re in hyperspace, which gives me euphoria to think about, never mind the brainbending sight of stars smearing into blue light past viewports I’m testing. Besides it’s always possible that we might stop, and then where would we be?

Somewhere different. I don’t want to miss that.

There’s the sound of many footsteps approaching. I don’t turn yet, because it’s important to give the impression that I’m totally focused on my work. Plus I’ve found it’s more successful to turn and greet people very suddenly, once they’re too close to ignore me. My favourable reaction statistics are 45% today, but I think I can push them up further if I pay more attention to the verb-suffixes denoting relative status.

“And here’s one of our cadets. We don’t just take in children; we are willing to retrain many young people from disadvantaged worlds.” It’s Lieutenant Sala, acting as tour guide. I turn around to give her a big cheesy grin. Lieutenant Sala merely nods at me. But she’s cracking. I’m 90% certain that if there weren’t other people around, she would have smiled back. I transfer my smile to the people with her. They’re dressed in the most colourful gear I’ve seen on this ship. Their fingers flash with gems, their clothes have fluttering tags and proud collars and wide rich belts.

I’m not sure I know the status suffixes for these people. They look mega-wealthy. But I’m willing to try.

“Uplifting welcome, worthy visitors to our belovedly sanguinous ship!”

“Right, well, we’ll have to keep moving if we wish to attend General Hux’s luncheon,” says Lt Sala, taking a bald man with blue skin by the elbow. I’m failing at not-staring. “No, I don’t know where she’s from,” I hear her voice fading down the corridor among the clack of expensively-heeled shoes.

One person hasn’t moved. It’s Kylo Ren. He must have been standing behind the others.

“Belovedly sanguinous ship?” It’s difficult to tell, through the helmet, whether he’s amused or appalled.

“No? Not right? What should have I said?”

“Nothing.”

“I’ve never spoken to you with voice before. Always head-in-head talk before. So I’m learning, see?”

“I’m not so certain that’s a good thing. What else are they teaching you?”

I jab a finger at the windows. “If viewport leaking, run, hit red button and be on the other side of pressure door before it come downs. Comes down.”

I’m about to ask who our important visitors were when the light flickers. Outside the viewport, the pulsing blaze of light resolves into long streaks and then freezes. We snap back into normal space. There’s velvety night, stars, and a vast pearly blue crescent, shockingly close. _A planet!_

Longing takes my breath away. In my months in space I’ve knitted together a new persona out of black-edged laughter and my will to survive. Homesickness is a stone that rips right through it.

But this planet is not my home. It’s obvious, once I’ve blinked away the tears blurring my vision. I rub them into my face, as though they’re a normal part of my beauty routine. Tears, good for the complexion, and they make your eyes look bigger.

“Where is that named?” I say, when I can speak again. My nose is pressed up against the plasteel. Kylo moves over to stand next to me, and his black gloves rest on the sill next to mine. He expects me to move out of the way, but I’m not going to. I bet he manspreads when he sits down too.

“Codia.”

White spirals of cloud. Oceans. Icy poles. It looks like they have trade winds at the same latitudes. The dance of weather systems and landforms has its enchantments, if you have a way to understand it. I find it safer to think about such things, rather than...home.

After ten minutes, I realise Kylo Ren hasn’t moved anywhere. In fact he’s gone from standing next to me to being inside my head. He’s curious. I wonder how he sees the equations that flow through me as naturally as water when I look at the cyclones and anticyclones, the jet stream clouds and the pillowy ones of the lower atmosphere. Cool and clear and reliable. I’m not sure it’s good to remember this much of my former life, but right now it doesn’t hurt as much as I expected.

_What are you doing?_

_Maths._

_Why?_

_I like numbers._

Better than feelings, at any rate. He must have picked up that thought, because he gives a nod and I sense his understanding. Respect even. I’ve seen inside his head once. It’d be even more of a burning ruin if he didn’t have his own ways of stopping himself falling apart. Mine is maths. His is…cutting people to pieces, apparently. Or practicing to do it.

He gives me a kind of mental sneer before he withdraws his presence from within my head. _Why do you think they fear me?_

I shrug. We return to staring at the planet outside. It is rather lovely. Kylo seems less twitchy and hostile than usual. I go back to thinking about weather, which is easy and soothing compared to my moral dilemma about befriending psychopathic killers.

Kylo gestures at the clouds below. “This is work that you do?”

“Did. Yes. I could do again.” I give him my most appealing look, and then blush as I realise I’ve done an Eyelash Flutter. What a gleep. Appalled, I blurt out, “Sorry, sorry, I did not mean that!”

_“What?”_

I tap my head because I can’t explain in Basic.

 _What?_ he repeats in my head.

I do it again, a simpering parody of myself. _This. I don’t do this kind of thing. I am not begging you for anything!_

Kylo stares down and lets me flail around like a person whose jokes only get less funny the more she tries to explain them. Finally I’m reduced to staring back. I can only admire the smart chrome detailing around his eyepieces for so long before I get uncomfortable. _Who’s inside there?_

He drops his black-gloved hand onto my shoulder. It is freakishly heavy and his fingers reach nearly all the way around my neck. That awful mask comes down next to my face and he pushes the words into my head, black and cold as space. _Your worst nightmare._

 _Ah, but now I’m in your head too._ I think determinedly of kittens. Adorable, fluffy kittens with their darling little perfect paws and their boggle-eyed wonder faces. Kittens chasing string. Kittens small enough to fit in your hand.

He enjoys terrorising people, I can feel it: the beginnings of bloodlust. But, well, kittens. He gives me an exasperated shake and lets go. _You crazy alien!_

“No, you-all crazy aliens,” I say. “But remember, I am loyal to you because you didn’t throw me into space. No need to frighten so hard at me. To me, you’re good.”

He seems to take that as praise, and it’s enough to scare him off. He’s clearly not a people person. He drops his hand and walks off without a word.

That didn’t go too badly, overall.


	10. Not What She Expected

It’s been a day of annoyances for Kylo. Hours of meetings, all First Order business he has little interest in. There’s only so much Hux’s needling he can deal with in a day.

“We’ve had an interesting lead on a very secret light-industry world we could colonise. It would serve perfectly for a hidden base. We’re just waiting on Lord Ren here to gather information on its location, which he’s _so far_ failed to do.”

It’s difficult to know how much Hux reports back to Snoke, or how much Snoke listens if he does.

As he approaches his room, he becomes aware that somebody is in there already. It’s the girl. He hasn’t been near her for weeks, but now he can sense her through the door. Is Hux sending spies to look through his personal belongings? But why on earth would he send her? She’s impossible to miss in the Force: a stupidly loud ball of enthusiasm. Though of course Hux wouldn’t realise that.

Kylo’s movements become silent and fluid as he draws his lightsaber and palms the sliding door open. There aren’t many places she can hide, and he can leap in and make a sweep of them all before she knows he’s here.

Hiding she is not. She’s making a rather attractive silhouette splayed across his personal viewport, feet and one hand braced on the sill and sides as she stretches up to reach something near the top. She freezes, twisting her head over her shoulder to see him, her mouth an “O” of surprise.

“Is this Hux’s idea?” he snarls. “Spying on me?”

“What? Don’t say to me about Hux.”

“What are you doing in my room, then?”

She waves a small tube at him. “Windows. I’m doing all the officer quarters this week. What’s that?” She jerks her chin at his lightsaber. He switches it off and hooks it back on his belt. She relaxes. Putting the little tube in her tool belt, she runs a stick with a glowing point over the seam between the top of his viewport and the wall. “I didn’t know this is your room. Don’t disfraze please.”

“Disfraze?”

“Distrace. Distract. I have to make sure this will set. Time is important.”

He walks over to look at her handiwork and check there’s nothing embedded in the new seal. Surveillance chips, for instance. He’s found them in his room before, and Hux is his main suspect.

“What’s Hux’s room like, then?”

She grimaces. “Worst when Hux is in it. He is the enemy of joy. But the room would surprise you. It is…” she searches her vocabulary. “Golden. Soft. Cushions. Big pictures. Small nice things on shelves, he collect I think. He has a little pet-animal. I made friends with it. That was my mistake.”

“That damn thing. The stormtroopers hate it. Did it bite you?”

“No, Hux pulled my hair out and kick me. Jealous man because pet-animal like me.”

Kylo snorts. “How pathetic.”

She’s still passing the glowstick over the window seal, slow and careful. With her feet on the sill, she’s taller than him. She flashes a quick smile down at him. “Lucky huh? I make sure you won’t get sucked into space today.”

“How did we ever manage without you on the Finalizer?”

She shakes her head, smiling. “Disaster, right? So. This is your room?”

“Yes.” He puts one hand on either side of the viewport, so she’s standing within the cage of his arms. She tenses, but keeps her face to her work. “Why aren’t you afraid of me?”

“I had another life before,” she says. “This life is extra. I will enjoy it while I can. Not let fear rob me.” She finishes a last pass over the seal and packs her tools into her belt, ignoring the way he’s nearly touching her. But then she needs to step down, and he’s in the way. He waits, and so does she. Eventually curiosity gets the better of him, and he reaches into her mind with the Force.

_I owe him my **life.** I must pay whatever price he asks. If he wants my body, then my pride has no say in this. The rules are different here. I must do whatever is necessary._

He was merely going to ask her to steal Hux’s cat. But now she’s put this on the table…It jars him. She acts so cheerful, but underneath it she’s steeling herself to endure whatever  humiliation he might inflict. She’ll put up with it, and even joke about it afterwards, because that’s how she protects herself.

She’d looked good when he walked in, braced against the viewport. Narrow waist flaring to curved hips, a kind of strong, compact grace. She looks good now, with her definite features and the hint of gold under her brown skin.

“Do you find me that repulsive?” he asks.

She slides her back down to lean on one side of the windowsill. Now her face is level with his. Her eyes are wide and brown, fringed with long black lashes. Her hair is pulled up into a crown knot, but a few crinkly tendrils escape. “Re-pul-sive.” She considers the word seriously, then brightens. “How can I tell? I don’t know what you look like.”

That again. Well, this is his room, and he usually takes his helmet off here. He unclips it and tosses it onto the nearest chair before turning to fix her with a look. “Happy?”

Her eyes widen and she seems to have trouble swallowing for a moment. “Uh. You’re my age.”

Of all the things she might say, this is not what he’s expecting. But it’s not exactly what she’s thinking either, and Kylo feels the corners of his mouth twitch. He rubs his scalp luxuriously to fluff up his hair. She watches avidly, and his smile widens. His hair is one bit of vanity that Snoke has failed to drive out of him. “I’m your age, you say. What did you expect?”

She screws her face up into a comical mask. “I don’t know. Old. Ugly. Ugh, I probably should have not said that.”

“No, you probably shouldn’t.” He leans in closer. There weren’t too many ways this could go.

“So, do you have a friendgirl?” she chirps.

“No.”

“Why not?”

“Because people don’t like me and I don’t like them. Don’t imagine I’m hiding my beautiful true nature under my harsh exterior.”

She frowns a little, working out what he’s just said. Then she perks up. “But you didn’t throw me out the airlock either.” She stares at him for a beat longer, then grins. “I know. I am setting myself a low standard for choosing a friendboy, but…”

“It’s ‘boyfriend’. And no! Do you know who I _am?”_

“Not really,” she says, and leans in for an even closer look. “People say you are named Kylo Ren. You’re very interest man to me. My rescuer.”

“Interesting,” he corrects her. “Would you jump in a volcano because it was _interesting?”_

“Maybe. I jumped in a cave once. My friend said no, but I said yes. We got lost. People found us two days later.”

“You didn’t learn from that, then?”

She shrugs. _We were afraid, but_ ….He catches a picture from her head: delicate curtains of translucent stone, wet and shining in the dim light of a torch. The primal dark, the fear, and the wonder of making the first footsteps echo in the ancient silence.

Her lips are parted, thinking of it. He wants to bite them. Or maybe nibble on them a bit.

_Really?_

He can feel himself blushing. This whole thing is getting out of control too fast. “Get out, you little nobody!”

“Me, a nobody? Huh! So do you care everything about status? Just like those pirates!”

She pulls a face, and he steps back. Grinning, she ducks under his arm and skips to the door. “I didn’t want to anyway!” she says as she disappears from sight.

He didn’t want to either. But now he does. There are approximately 10,000 available women on the Finalizer counting the officer class alone. Thousands of them young, fit, ambitious and above all respectful. Among them he can find any number of suitable companions for a night. He’s done it before.

So why fixate on her? He doesn’t even know her name.


	11. Shitty Prince Charming

How was I to know he was Shitty Prince Charming? What was the very first thing I learned about him, after learning that he could read my mind and show me his? That he is a mess. People are terrified of him and he’s a human earthquake. He walked in on me just now with a drawn weapon, and I have no doubt he was ready to use it.

He is not a fixer-upper.

And even if he were, my track record with fixer-uppers is not good. Take my ex, for example.

The last time I saw my ex, he was in hospital. I went to tell him I was going hiking to get my head straight.

He’d looked out the windows. “I’m glad I can see the mountains from here.”

“Not those ones. The Kepler range.”

“I know. But still.” He blinked back the beginnings of tears. “I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills whence cometh my help,” he said softly.

“You’re not…feeling religious again, are you?” Not that I have anything against religion, it’s just that when somebody starts thinking God is speaking to them personally, telling them the secrets of the universe…

“No,” he’d said, his face falling suddenly into a frown. My question was loaded with other meanings, part of all the conversations we’d had where I’d failed to fix him. “I’m taking my meds. They don’t give me any choice, here.”

I’ve put that whole sad mess behind me, along with an entire planet full of people and things I miss and refuse to think about. Out here in space, I have only myself to look after.

And yet here I am, obsessing about another disaster of a man. Imagining what it would be like to plunge my hands into that thick, glossy hair, to pull his face towards mine, to stroke those cushiony-looking lips with one finger until I can tease them into a smile, and then kiss them. Brush my lips across those unfeasibly-long lashes and pull back to watch his eyes go from that hard, challenging stare into something lighter and softer.

I’m not just pulled in by the eyes or the lips or the physical power that Kylo’s massive frame more than hints at. It’s the sense of familiarity. Those strange moments I spent inside Kylo’s head showed me the same impulsiveness, the same passionate idealism that I recognise from my ex. I’ve never been inside my ex’s head the same way, but if I could have, I imagine it’d be same kind of burning whirlwind.

I slam my heels down on the durasteel decking and bounce off it with each stride, trying to walk out my pent-up energy. But it’s impossible. I kick out at invisible enemies, and then run along the corridor pretending I can do parkour up and down the walls as I go. Around the corner and straight into a floor-polishing detail led by a pissy-faced Flight-Sergeant who’s assigned to look after us cadets whenever he’s on punishment for drinking. Sucks to be them.

“Hey! Cadet 91-whatever your name is! Lieutenant Sala is looking for you!”

_Learn my fricken name, loser. It’s not that hard, even if I am from some alien place you’ve never heard of._

“I’ll go find her right away,” I say. “Where is she?”

“Resh Four. And why are you jumping around like that?”

“Fitness. Are we going to get any hand-to-hand combat training?” I say. Random distraction can work well, I find, if it’s creative enough. It’s amazing the bullshit I can get away with sometimes.

“I should report you,” he mutters sullenly, but does nothing. I shadowbox my way down to Resh Four, which is Lieutenant Sala’s office. She’s got a list of cadet assignments on her datapad, though I can see the pink corner of another file peeping out behind them, hastily swiped from sight when I entered. It explains the flush on her usually pale cheeks: Sala’s a big fan of hot stormtrooper porn fiction. She really shouldn’t leave her datapad around where I can find it.

“Have you finished with the windows on Level One?” she says.

“Yes, I have.” Kylo’s room was the last in the corridor I’d been assigned to.

Sala does a double take, eyes narrowing. “Why are you breathing like that?”

I could ask her the same question but it’s probably best if I don’t betray any knowledge of Stormtrooper 4-Play and his throbbing hot rod. “Fitness training,” I say. It really does sound virtuous enough to escape further enquiry.

“Good. I’d like you to join Team Grek for the rest of the week. They’re cleaning up some ships we’ve acquired. You can learn some basic engine maintenance.”

Ships. Ships as in actual spaceships? I can hardly wait. How long before I can learn about hyperdrives?

I mean, I’m IN a spaceship. But it’s like a space city. I have no idea how the guts of it works. “Oh, YES!” I shout, clasping my fists and dancing around. It’s been an emotional day.

Sala sighs and rolls her eyes, but I can see the faintest hint of a smile on the corners of her mouth.


	12. Hello, Stinky Alien Ship!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Our girl's met this ship before...

Well well well! Welcome home. I know _this_ ship. Team Grek has been crawling all over it getting it space-ready after the beating it took when the Finalizer captured it. It looks a lot better than it did. Still the same reek of old socks and cockroaches, though. I can smell it from outside the hatch. Luckily I don’t have to go in.

Flight Sergeant D’Tun hands me a toolkit similar to the one I’ve been using on viewports. “Get up on that gantry and have Liise 9236 show you where the shield generator networks are embedded in the hull. You two will go over them with these sensors to check for breaks.”

Soon I’m climbing all over the hull with Liise, a tall girl with a really amazing prosthetic hand. She can support her whole weight with it, hanging off a bolt by two fingers while running the pinger over the threads of the shield generator.

“That’s fantastic. Is it comfortable?”

She smiles shyly. “Pretty good. I’m used to it. I’m lucky the First Order took me. If I’d lost my hand back home, I couldn’t have got another!”

Her hand was blown off in a firefight. If she’d stayed home, she might not have lost it in the first place. I keep my thoughts to myself. Her home could be a festering civil war, for all I know.

Unexpectedly, I’m called away halfway through my first shift. F/S D’Tun is consulting a message delivered by one of those cute mouse droids I’ve failed to befriend so far. “You’re wanted in Landing Bay One. Follow the droid, it’ll show you where to go.” He gives me a strange look. “Apparently Kylo Ren wants you.”

People here don’t know the Death March tune of course, so I just hum it to myself as I make the dramatic exit they all seem to expect. Myself, I don’t know _what_ to expect.


	13. There's a Prophecy...

Standing in the Finalizer's holochamber, Kylo drinks up Snoke's teachings concerning prophecies. Telling the future is a subtle and dangerous art in the Force, but sometimes, with caution, one may use it as a guide. Right now, there's a particular prophecy that is troubling Snoke: something about a girl with tremendous powers who will either be their greatest threat or their greatest opportunity. Clearly the idea’s been gnawing at Snoke, for he keeps bringing up the subject of the girl Kylo’s found. Kylo’s unconvinced the girl is anything unusual, but Snoke waves off his objections with a flick of his long fingers.

" The surest way her true powers could be hidden would be if she were unaware of them herself," he declares.

Kylo nods respectfully. There is so much he doesn't know.

“Your knights arrive here for instruction next week,” Snoke reminds him. “They require further training from you. Come to me, and bring the girl with you. I will search her powers myself.” And so it is decided.

Kylo’s shuttle is designed to inspire fear in his enemies and respect in his allies. The girl is thrilled to bits with it, of course. A detachment of stormtroopers is assigned to escort her inside, and as they approach the gangway, Kylo can hear her grilling them for details. “So, they’re _sensor_ wings! They don’t fly?” She flaps her arms demonstratively.

He takes a deep breath and makes a move towards the privacy of his cabin. But it’s already too late.

“Kylo Ren!”

“That’s _Lord_ Ren to you,” the stormtroopers chorus doggedly.

“Lord? Cool! Lord Ren, where are we going? Why? Are we —” and here she’s nearly dancing with excitement — “going to land on a _planet?”_

“Assign her to a cabin and make sure she stays in it,” he snaps at the captain of the stormtroopers. She gives him a hurt look.

As she’s escorted away, he’s unwise enough to brush up against her mind and overhear, _Who cares? Best field trip ever!_

Field trip? He has a premonition that the meeting with Snoke can’t possibly go well.


	14. What the Darkness Tells Me

For some reason he relents and comes to visit my cabin, where I’m practically pasted to the viewport, waiting for the rush of hyperspace.

“That was amazing,” I start, before he can speak. “Seeing the Finalizer from the outside. I knew it was big, but wow! And what a take-off.” I’m out of words, so I zoom my hand around to demonstrate. “Oh! And how come the air doesn’t go out the doors?”

“Force field.”

“Force-field, ahah. How does it —” With my limited vocabulary, I can’t always follow people’s explanations. I tap my head to invite Kylo to use his telepathy. I feel a little flare of _otherness_ in my head, but he doesn’t take the bait.

“You might be wondering why you’re on this ship,” he says aloud.

“Well, yes, but you’ll tell me that.”

“My master wishes to question you.”

“Not Hux?” I ask nervously. I calculate my chances of amusing Hux as being very low indeed.

“No!” he says, sounding even grumpier than his usual helmet-voice. _“My_ master is Supreme Leader Snoke!”

“Why? You did already question me. You can take thoughts out of my head. I can’t lie to you.” I catch myself gnawing my nails, and stop.

“I may have missed something. He is far more powerful than I.” He does his trademark looming-over-me pose, which is pretty easy given that I’m so short. Or maybe he’s trying to get closer, who knows? “If you are hiding something, trust me, he will find out.”

It’s all rather melodramatic. I shake my head, pulling a face. “Snoke, he will be disappointive. Disappointed.”

“I warn you, the Supreme Leader does not deal kindly with disappointment.”

“That seems not fair.” I look him over, trying to read his mood. “You can take your mask off if you want to be more comfortable.” _Then maybe I can read your face,_ I think. Apparently that’s the last thing he wants, and I catch a stray thought from him. _Doors open both ways._

“Are we, um, landing on a planet? Will I see a planet?” He looks down at me and I get the feeling that my enthusiasm isn’t something he’s used to. His mask doesn’t give him much protection from it.

“Yes.”

“Well, good.” The thought cheers me up. Plus, about Snoke…Sure, I’ve heard nothing definite, and it all sounds bad, but really _wild._ If he can do half the things people say about him, I’m in for an interesting time!

He catches my thought. “Always looking on the bright side.” It’s meant to be a sneer, but there’s not much malice in it.

I manage a smile. “I thought I spend two years in space, the adventure of my life, and still die without seeing anything. This is better.”

After a couple of days in hyperspace we’re at a staging post near Rakata Prime. Ordinary grunt stormtroopers don’t get to see Snoke’s home base, so Kylo takes me onto the scout ship waiting for us. Happily, I’m allowed to curl up in the spare seat and watch him pilot us up from the landing pad. I will never get tired of take-offs in space.

“Where are we going?”

“The Unknown Regions.”

“Why are they called the Unknown Regions?”

“Because they haven’t been explored yet.” He sounds unconcerned.

Outrageous. “Maybe somebody should, then!”

Kylo snorts. “Not everyone’s as curious as you.” He starts working the controls to get us into hyperspace, and I watch him, his big hands in their clumsy-looking gauntlets moving with surprising speed and delicacy across the toggles and switches. I ask questions, of course, and his answers are brief, but not overly annoyed.

Once we’re in hyperspace he pushes himself back into a long stretch, and I watch the blazing light from the viewscreen reflect off his black costume. There’s a human, a _man,_ under that mask. I've seen him once. Now I’m alone with him in a small cabin, and I’ll never be in a better position to find out more.

In the Finalizer he’s a distant, faceless presence, defined by the way people react to him: cringing or stiffening with fear if he turns his mask towards them, or snapping to attention, quiveringly eager to please. And I’ve caught flashes of naked hatred on General Hux’s face when he looks at Kylo during their weekly political rallies. It must be a lonely life.

“So we’re going on an adventure together…” I try.

“I have business with the Knights of Ren.”

“Who are the Knights of Ren?”

“If you’re lucky, you won’t meet them.”

“Do you like anyone?”

No answer. But after a minute he takes off his helmet and rubs his hands tiredly through that gorgeous hair that I want to touch so badly. I watch his profile. It’s a long, strange face. In the Finalizer I’ve seen many kinds of human faces and races, but even so he stands out in some way I can’t define. Maybe it’s the forcefulness in his expression. It’s a face for expressing big emotions, anyway.

After a minute he sniffs and wrinkles his nose. I have to admit I’m a bit whiffy. I’ve been wearing the same clothes since we left.

“You have an appointment with the refresher.”

“Big nose,” I say, before I can stop myself. “Anyway, what can I do? We left so quickly, I haven’t got other clothes.”

He jerks a thumb towards the door of the cockpit. I go out and look around. The refresher turns out to be a claustrophobic cupboard opposite the cabins. I can’t stand the smell of my own clothes, so I wash them as well as I can in the confined space. That leaves me with another problem, because the refresher doesn’t have a hot air dryer. I wrap the one inadequate towel around myself and stick my head through the door to the cockpit.

“Do you have any spare clothes I could wear?”

Kylo screws himself around in his seat to look at me with disgust. “Do you think I am going to loan you mine?”

“I don’t know. Is there a law against it?”

“Kriff it,” he mutters, scrambling out of his seat and pushing past me before I can get out of the way. He stops to give me a long up and down look as he passes. The corridor is suddenly far too small for the two of us.

“What are you looking at?” I ask, though I know perfectly well.

“You’ve got the only towel wet,” he says petulantly. The tips of his ears tell a different story. They’re going red.

“Yeah, well so are my clothes. I just need something while they dry.”

He doesn’t answer, so I go to my cabin to see if I can wrap a sheet around myself. Just as I’m doing that, he bursts in and shoves a black t-shirt, like a kind of a long tunic, into my hands. It’s wonderfully soft. I hold it up to my cheek and smile. “Nice.”

“I want it back,” he says ungraciously. “Without…”

“Girl germs. Yes I know.”

His eyes rake me up and down again, and I’m tempted to drop the sheet I’m wearing and yell “Boo!” just to see what happens. Instead I hand him his precious towel and busy myself arranging my wet clothes so the cabin’s air conditioning might dry them. He leaves without a word.

But later, it is no surprise to me that he should come into my cabin and into my bed, a shadow slipping in just as I’m falling asleep. It tells me everything I need to know about him, when he insists on absolute darkness and silence. How else can I enter that armour of his, except by hiding the whole room in the same blackness he wears, making it part of the same blind, secret space? I, desperate for touch, hold him as tightly as the heavy bindings he wears, and he thrusts into me out of a need that he can’t voice. Invisible in our fierce silent striving we can be nobody and everyone.

Afterwards he lets me finish taking off his clothes. It takes ages, and I surprise a throaty bark of laughter from him when I touch him in some way he doesn’t expect — and he doesn’t seem to expect much. Brushing his lashes with my lips like I’d imagined, or walking my fingers tippy-toe up the insides of his thighs, nibbling his ear or sucking gently on his adam’s apple. Counting his ribs firmly with the edge of my hand, or combing his pubic hair with my fingers as though I could straighten it, given time.

I’m an anonymous mouth and hands in the dark, and he’s my invisible lover, and that’s just the way I want it. I take his hand and show him what I like, and I ride him until we both come again. Later he rests his face in my hair and I feel his mind, what he calls the Force, leaning against mine, as though he might speak inside my head. It’s a strange and delicate intimacy. But he doesn’t complete the connection, and a moment later he gets up to leave in the same silence he arrived with.

I predict that in the morning he’ll pretend it never happened, and I’m not wrong. But at least some of the ice is broken, and over the course of our long journey we talk, sitting side by side in the cockpit. I sense he’s bored, and my questions about ships and worlds and aliens and history distract him from whatever darkness eats at him when he’s silent.

He’s touchy about recent history, though. He tenses up and won’t answer, and I begin to realise that he’s in the middle of it: he and people on the Finalizer, and this person Snoke, somehow all in the eye of a storm. History being made, and for him it’s personal.

He doesn’t ask me about my home either, whether from respect for my feelings or disinterest, I don’t know or care.

 


	15. Snoke is Disappointed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maybe Kylo should have prepared Narrator Girl a bit better before she met Snoke.
> 
>  
> 
> * * *

It’s excruciating. All the way through Snoke’s stronghold she’s almost dancing by his side, craning around to look at everything: the dim orange sky with its wrack of low dusty clouds, the strangely-patterned paving stones, the too-high ceilings, the dark hallways. She touches everything, running her hands over the crumbling stonework and even stroking the ancient durasteel doors to the throne room as they swing open.

“Try to be a bit more…” he mutters, feeling his face grow hot as the doors reveal Snoke brooding on his polished throne.

“A bit more _what?”_ she mutters back, and then she sees Snoke. “Oh!” She does her bouncy-heels walk up to Snoke and makes a floundering attempt at a bow.

_So this is the girl…_

Snoke is mid-thought, his cold mind dropping words into Kylo’s head, when she interrupts, speaking out loud.

“Honoured to meet you, Supreme Leader!”

 _SILENCE!_ he roars through the Force, shatteringly present to Kylo’s mind. But she obviously can’t sense it. She straightens from her bow, clasps her hands and tries out a respectful pose while sucking up the sight of him. _Wow, he’s big! And far out, those scars! How did he survive them? Kinda freaky but hey, I’m not judging. I’m here to learn…_

Snoke leans down towards her, narrowing his focus so Kylo can’t pick up his thoughts. The girl takes it as an invitation and steps closer. Snoke extends a hand and she looks at it with interest.

A moment later she’s spasming on the floor. Kylo can almost see, and can certainly sense, the Force streaming from Snoke’s hand. It wracks her, boring through every fibre of her being. Her eyes are rolled up and her head lashes from side to side, striking the cold stone floor with a hard cracking sound.

A deep shudder runs through Kylo’s whole body. He controls it and pulls himself up so he’s standing at full attention, hopefully giving the appearance of detachment. He’s glad he has his helmet on because he can close his eyes until it’s over.

“That was disappointing,” says Snoke, after what seems like a long time. Kylo’s noticed before how his voice becomes light and pleasant after he’s inflicted pain, almost as though he’s smiling. He opens his eyes. Snoke is not smiling, however, and the girl is lying on the floor like a broken puppet in a smear of something, blood or vomit. He doesn’t want to know.

Snoke motions him to come closer, and he’s forced to stand next to the body on the floor.

“Take off your helmet.”

He unclips it and endures Snoke’s stare for an eternity, and worse, feels Snoke rummaging around in his mind to pick out everything he’s thought about the girl. Finally Snoke withdraws and leans back. His stare has grown even colder.

“How disappointing, as I said,” he begins mildly. “I looked. I took her apart. I searched. And what did I find?”

Kylo knows what “disappointing” means to Snoke, and he braces himself. “What did you find, Master?”

 _“Nothing_. Nothing at all. She is a completely ordinary girl with no Force abilities whatsoever. You have wasted my time.”

Kylo stares at Snoke’s feet, and the silence grows electric. The air of the throne room seems to set a black weight on his shoulders, and Snoke’s eyes bore into him.

“Would you like to know why she was able to enter your mind and read your thoughts?” asks Snoke at last.

“Yes, Master.” His voice a papery whisper from a dry throat.

Snoke suddenly flings out an arm to point at Kylo, and roars, “Because you invited her in! _You,_ you pathetic fool, were so desperate for company that YOU pulled her in!”

“I did n—” He stops, remembering how the bright ribbon of her thoughts stood out among all of the Finalizer’s minds. So _attractive._ “I was not aware I did so.”

Snoke’s voice becomes even higher and lighter, and Kylo braces himself for sudden pain. “Are you _tired_ of us, Ren? Do we _bore_ you? Are your Knights not sufficiently amusing companions for you?” He’s almost crooning now. “But I forget how young men are. Perhaps I should let you go and play with your toy until you’re ready to come back to me with a clear head.”

 _“She’s_ not the kind of girl I want!” Kylo cries.

Snoke leans back suddenly and lets out a crack of cold laughter. “I’ve seen your dreams. The kind of woman you want would never let you near her. The only way you'd get such a woman would be if you were to steal her and break her first.”

Kylo glares at him. Snoke is still laughing, a nasty affair of exposed teeth and lots of hissing in the back of his throat. “Take that one,” he says, pointing at the sprawled figure at his feet. “It’s all you’ll get.”

He leans forward again. “And now let me remind you of the power you’re still too weak to grasp. Still too soft.”

Kylo’s last coherent thought is, _Oh no, the hand! Here comes the hand!_ before pain lights him up and sets every nerve ablaze until it burns out and he falls into darkness.


	16. A Cold Waking

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Maybe blaming the wrong people is a dark side thing. Or just an evil overlord kind of thing. Whatever; it seems misplaced blame is catching.
> 
>  
> 
> * * *

It’s not the first time I’ve woken up with a pounding headache and my hair stuck to the floor, but this time I don’t have any happy hazy drunken memories to explain how I got this way. I can’t remember a thing.

The pounding gets worse when I unstick my head and raise it to look around. It’s a good thing the light is so dim otherwise I think my eyes would stab me in the brain.

I’m in a big, high ceilinged room, empty apart from a massively large throne and some oversized tiered seating around the perimeter. Every surface is uncomfortably black and shiny apart from the bit of floor I’ve evidently vomited all over. There is silence.

I sit up carefully and catch sight of Kylo lying sprawled behind me with a bloody nose. He’s not moving, so I commando crawl slowly over and lay two fingers on the pulse at his throat. It’s slow and strong, so I guess he’s in no immediate danger.

 _But what did this to us?_ We came in here to…I rack my brains, but my thoughts are like glue. Something about Snoke. Did we meet Snoke? We must have done. Did he attack us? Did something attack us all, and take him?

My throat is parched and I can’t think straight. Kylo must weigh twice what I do, so there’s not much I can do to help until he regains consciousness. I get to my feet in stages, trying not to jar my head any farther. There’s a tall doorway behind us. After a few staggery steps I recover my balance enough to creep through the door, where I find find a huge empty corridor leading away into the distance. Big alcoves and doors open off from it, and the occasional high window lets in a bit of dusty orange light. In the distance I hear water, so I totter along until I come to some kind of fountain in a side alcove. Water trickles into a black basin flanked with disturbingly skeletal statues. It’s an odd kind of thing, and I get the impression it might serve some kind of ceremonial purpose. I can make out the word “clean” in the inscription carved around the rim in aurabesh. A place to cleanse oneself before visiting the….my mind blanks. The dignitary? Exalted one?

I doubt anyone here has been more in need of cleansing than me, so after drinking my fill I plunge my whole head and shoulders in. After a moment when I’m afraid I’m going to pass out and drown myself - _of all the stupid intergalactic ways to die!_ \- I feel a lot better.

There’s a tall window placed to make light fall onto the fountain, and it has long, incredibly dusty drapes on either side. Outside there’s a view of low reddish sandstone outcrops and a sprawling complex of buildings in the same stone. Beyond that there’s a sandy treeless plain. No sign of movement.

I don’t feel too guilty ripping some of the backing off the curtains and soaking them in the fountain. The whole place has such an air of desolation that I can hardly be accused of making it worse. I take the wet material back to Kylo to see what I can do for him.

He hasn’t moved, so I wipe away the dried blood around his nose and mouth and dab at his brow until he starts to stir. He hasn’t got my headache, because once his eyes open he sits up very suddenly, pushing away my hands. The look in his eyes gives me vertigo. For a moment I think I’ve woken up some identical copy of Kylo, only this one hates me.

He casts a wild look around the throne room before scrambling back away from me as though I’m poisonous. “Get away from me!” he snarls.

“What did I do?”

Jumping to his feet, he turns on his heel and storms out without answering.

“WHAT?” I yell, and my own voice gives my head an extra stab of pain. Kylo is a retreating shadow against the reddish light of the hallway.

After a minute I follow after him. I don’t know where else to go or what to do. The place seems deserted, and he looks mad enough to leave without me. It’s hard to even keep him in sight, especially as I have to hang onto the bannisters of the long stairways and sidle down to keep from falling over. His hard footfalls disappear into the distance, down a myriad of corridors and turnings. When I break into a jog, painful flashes of light flare up behind my eyes with every step. Automatic doors boom shut behind me, and I suspect there’s no going back. So I have to keep up with him.

Eventually we’re several levels lower and he’s far ahead of me down a long corridor that feels like a hotel, with evenly-spaced doors on one side. He disappears into one of them, slamming it shut. Finally I reach it, and knock.

He must have been waiting on the other side, for the door flies open and he’s standing before me in a clench-fisted fury. His face is distorted with anger and there are actual tears of rage in his eyes. “Don’t you come near me!” he yells.

“Where am I supposed to go then?”

“Just get out of my sight!” The door, unsurprisingly, slams shut. If I’d done what people do in the movies, and stuck my foot in there to keep it open, I’d be an amputee right now.

After a while of me standing there with the other kind of tears in my eyes, I choose another door at random, not too close, but hopefully close enough that I can hear if Kylo tries to leave without me. There is a room, very much like a hotel room except everything is too big and suffers the same general air of neglect as everything else here. I lift the bedcovers, releasing a puff of dust, and crawl in. I must have passed out after that.


	17. The Knights of Ren

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The usual workplace bickering, only with the Force.
> 
>  
> 
> * * *

The shrill cheep of Kylo’s comm unit rouses him out of a sleep wracked with dreams of humiliation. Thank the Maker there’s work to do. If he had to sit and brood on the shaming Snoke gave him yesterday, he’d surely kill himself.

An hour later he’s sitting across from Hatun Doss, his second in command in the Knights of Ren. There’s an ornately patterned pyramid the size of a fist glowing faintly on the table between them.

“Our guesses about Rakata proved true,” Doss says. “We found this on one of the outer planets in the system.”

It’s a holocron, and a beautiful one too. Doss stares at it with no detectable expression. Stolid, obedient, and apparently immune to fear, he is the epitome of what a Knight of Ren should be.

The other Knights sit around the bare space Kylo’s picked as a briefing room. They’re sprawled on chairs, some with their feet up on the table. They pick their nails with their knives, or their teeth with their nails. Under his helmet, Kylo curls his lip.

While Doss recounts the Knights’ mission in his usual colourless way, Kylo picks up far more interesting images from one of the junior Knights, Talks-to-Ghosts, who must be one of the loudest thinkers in the galaxy. From Talks-to-Ghosts’ point of view, the Knights’ journey was a tremendous adventure, with glittering ice caves hidden on a remote abandoned world, mysterious ancient architecture, wild, unsettling forces, moments of danger and lucky escapes.

As a boy, Kylo had dreamed of having that kind of adventure. _I should have been on that mission! Instead of staying on the Finalizer and getting caught up with stupid… with that idiocy about the girl._

The blood rises to his face and he pushes the thought aside. The less he thinks about her the better. He focuses on Doss instead, but the man’s flat voice and air of smug detachment set his teeth on edge. _I’d like to punch him. See if that’ll put some expression on his face._

Talks-to-Ghosts throws himself off his chair, arms up to ward off some invisible threat.

“Get up. That wasn’t aimed at you,” says his friend Slasheye, picking up the chair and patting it. “Sorry, Lord Ren,” he says, turning to Kylo with a nod. Outwardly respectful, yet there’s a warning in his glance, and Kylo hardly needs the Force to read it: _When you lose your temper, Talks-to-Ghosts here gets really on edge. And none of us want to see Talksie out of control._

Kylo scowls. Slasheye is right: Talks-to-Ghosts is one of the most powerful Force users Kylo’s ever met. He’s also the one with the least control. Slasheye is nearly as erratic, but at least he’s sane most of the time.

The Knight beside him, Daran Sha, sniggers and rolls his eyes at the pair.

“Enough,” says Doss flatly. “Talks-to-Ghosts spotted dangers on that iceball planet that the rest of us missed.”

“Plus another ten dangers that _weren’t_ there,” snaps Sha, teetering back on his chair.

Doss backhands him without even turning to look at him. Sha falls off his perch with a clatter of armour, ending up sprawled on the floor.

“You’d do better to work on _your_ premonition skills,” says Doss.

“Hur hur, you didn’t see that coming!” says Mortreck, the youngest Knight.

Kylo slams his fists on the table and everyone straightens up. “Enough! Have you examined the holocron?”

“It’s a holocron about fighting techniques. Really old.”

“Good. Let’s have a look, then.”

Doss nods at Slasheye, signalling that it really is his turn to speak, for once.

“It’s in layers,” says Slasheye. “We got through to an introductory level, but we need more Force to truly unlock it. What we saw tells us it’s got valuable information. Ancient knowledge.”

“I will meditate on this and see if the inner levels will respond to me,” says Kylo. “Go and rest, eat, clean yourselves up. We’ll meet back here in five standard hours.”

Doss bows and hands him the holocron. Kylo takes it up to a high balcony overlooking Snoke’s complex, which is utterly silent in the stale pink sunlight of mid-morning. It’s a good place to meditate.

This is his real life: the mysteries of the Force, the tides of history, and the secret plans of the Supreme Leader.

He must not fail with this holocron. _If you don’t give up your secrets to me, I’ll kriffing smash you._

It turns out the holocron responds well to anger. _Of course, what better way to keep the Jedi out?_ Kylo smiles for the first time that day. 

He settles down to meditate on Force techniques for stopping blaster bolts. If this works, he’ll be able to stop a marksman with one flick of his hand.


	18. Another Day, Another Planet

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Narrator Girl meets the Knights of Ren.
> 
>  
> 
> * * *

A new day, a new planet! Sure, I have a headache and Kylo hates me, but things could be worse. For instance, my door could be locked and I could be trapped in this dusty old room. But it’s not, and now I have a whole mouldering complex of ancient alien buildings to explore.

I start by pounding on Kylo’s door and several like it just to be sure. No response, which is a relief to be honest. I’m not one to shy away from difficult conversations, but getting sense out of Kylo just now might be above my skill level. Instead, I set out to see what I can find.

Hopefully I won’t find a landing pad minus the ship we arrived on.

The place seems deserted, which is probably just as well. Some of the superhuman-sized doors are locked and guarded by hulking black robots that stir threateningly when I approach, making my heart pound for a moment. Every one of their spindly metal limbs looks like a potential weapon. I’ve been warned about K2 units; maybe this is them.

“Do you talk?”

Silence. Little red lights scan me, but there’s no movement.

“Is the Supreme Leader around?”

No reply. Well, I’m all happy with him staying on the other side of the doors they guard. I can’t exactly remember what happened in that throne room of his, but I’m pretty sure it was bad. Very disappointing for Snoke too, I expect. I hope he’s still feeling disappointed. Crushed by it, even.

On that cheering thought, I carry on through a maze of halls and stairways. Floor-to-ceiling windows give views of the rocky outcrop that the complex is built into. It’s made all of the same reddish stone, so the walls and low cliffs blend together. Some blackish stick-like vegetation takes shelter among the rocks. I’d love to find a way to get a better look. I really want to get outside - assuming the air is any good. The sky looks almost pink and the sun is a small copper coin I can nearly look at directly. It casts wonderfully exotic violet shadows.

As it happens, the only doors I find open on the landing pad. Kylo’s little scout ship is still there, and I let out a long breath of relief when I see it. _So he hasn’t left without me._

There’s another, larger ship parked next to it, too. I can’t get into either of them, but at least now if I can’t find Kylo, I know where I can wait. Though it’s a boring place - all concreted over, or duracreted, rather, and walled in on all sides.

But I’m outdoors! Breathing the air of another planet! It’s cool, and has an indefinable, slightly stale smell.

I poke around the walls and find some moss or lichen growing in the cracks. It’s attractively patterned in orange and black blotches, and shivers when I touch it with my thumbnail. It also dissolves my thumbnail, so that’s pretty interesting, especially as it doesn’t appear to harm the stones it grows on. Nails are tough as, well, _nails,_ and I wonder if the orange moss can metabolise them, or whether it’s just attacking me out of mean-spiritedness.

I haven’t got anything else to feed it as an experiment, so I head indoors again to see what else I can find.

A corridor on the other side of the building is entirely walled with huge windows. As I’m admiring the rich colours of the sunlight on the horizon-spanning plain outside, I hear something at last: the baritone rumble of male voices coming from the stairway at the far end of the hallway. I dither for a moment, but when I hear that they’re speaking Basic I turn towards them. No need though; they’re coming my way. A moment later, half a dozen men appear, descending towards me.

They’re dressed in the same black, flowing garments as Kylo wears, their capes and tunics draped over heavily armoured boots and gauntlets and shoulder-pads with generally aggressive-looking detailing. Under their arms, they carry an assortment of bizarre helmets.

“Hello!” I yell, waving at them. Though they could hardly miss me. They stop, clumped together at the base of the stairway.

“Who are you?” asks a slab-chested, slab-faced character in the front who I assume is their leader.

I introduce myself and ask if they’ve seen Kylo.

“He’s meditating,” says the leader.

“Who are you?” I ask.

“I am Hatun Doss,” says the leader. I hold out my hand. He looks at it coldly.

“We’re the Knights of Ren,” says one of the men, stepping forward to shake my hand. He has a toothy smile. “What brings you here?” His hand steals up to preen the curly points of his moustache once I let go.

“The Supreme Leader wanted to talk with me,” I say.

They exchange glances. “Why?” asks one.

“He didn’t tell his plans with me,” I said, truthfully enough. “Is there any food somewhere?”

“Who is she, Slasheye?” Doss asks a bald stocky man with an extravagant beard, whose eyes are a startlingly pale grey in a dark face like my own.

“I will check,” he answers, and turns towards me, fingers outstretched in a familiar gesture.

A tall, thin man with a high voice tells him, “She’s not the one, Slasheye.”

“The one what?” says the bald man, turning to him.

“The one in the prophecy.”

“What prophecy, Talksie?” asks Slasheye.

“What does it matter?” says the thin one, looking through me. His eyes have the bruised, pouchy look of a habitual insomniac. “I won’t go near that prophecy. Though you…” His eyes zero in on me for a second before he turns to speak to somebody who isn’t there, “She thinks she could solve it? Like an equation?” He cocks his head and starts to laugh delightedly.

“And that’s why he’s called Talks-to-Ghosts,” mutters Preeny-Moustache condescendingly, throwing me a smug look. I instantly want to punch him.

Slasheye steps forward and grabs my chin in his rough-gloved hand before I can dodge away. A second later he’s inside my head, examining my thoughts. But it’s as different as can be from Kylo’s interrogation. This man’s questioning is like a nuclear flash, exposing everything in my head at once in a pitiless light. I stand there like a lightning-struck tree before falling flat on my tail.

Maybe my contact with Kylo has given me some immunity. After a moment I’m able to get up, rubbing my tailbone. “Kriff it, do you have to be so extremious?”

“That’s just a little love tap coming from Slashy, hur hur hur,” says Preeny-Moustache. “If he wanted to, he could fry your brain. You better not do anything that could make him lose control, hur hur hur.”

Slasheye looks down at me, and the corner of his mouth twitches. He hasn’t quite broken the connection with my mind, and I hear his thought. _Oh, the trouble you’re going to cause!_ The thought seems to amuse him. He turns to the others and says merely, “She came with Lord Ren.”

“So, food?” I ask.

Preeny-Moustache says pompously, “We go to eat in the Hall of Graduates.”

Cool. I’m a graduate. Though maybe the word he used was more like “Initiates.” But I’m too hungry to quibble and I hope the Knights won’t, either.

Hatun Doss gives Preeny-Moustache a disgusted look, then turns to walk away. The others follow him. I fall into place next to the tall crazy-looking one.

“What is prophecy?” I ask.

He doesn’t answer for a moment, then says, “Our leader is waiting for a girl. She will be important.”

“Not this one,” says Slasheye.

“Yeah I know!” I’ve had about enough of being everyone’s big disappointment. Now even total strangers are dissing me.

The Hall of Whatever has a long table with benches on either side. It’s delightfully medieval. I’m even more pleased by the fast, modern droids that arrive bearing steaming plates of food.

I sit next to Slasheye. Preeny-Moustache of course sits next to me and leans over, smiling, making the twiddly points on his moustache curl up like a cat’s whiskers. “So where are you from?”

“A tiny place you won’t have heard of. It’s not even on the maps,” I say. “Where did you get your clothes from? Is it armour? What does it protect you from? Do you make it yourself?” I trace my fingers over the detailing on the sleeves. “This is very fine work.”

“That’s genuine whuffa leather,” said Preeny-Moustache. “Dathomirian, you know.”

One of the other Knights scoffs at him. “It’s hardly worth getting yourself nearly killed over. Why didn’t you get it made in Epsi Nadir?”

“What’s so dangerous about Dathomir?” I ask, around a mouthful of some meat. This is the best food I’ve had since I left home.

“Yes, but whuffa leather is imbued with Force protection by its very nature,” says Talks-to-Ghosts. The Knights start arguing about equipment. I’ve had similar conversations with hikers about the virtues of gore-tex and the merits of light boots versus heavy boots.

“Ankle support is very important,” I say wisely, if anyone glances at me. I’m ploughing my way through three vegetable platters and have my eye on what could well be dessert, if I can get somebody to pass it to me.

“Ankle support! Right!” says Slasheye, slamming his fork on the table. Which is rather dented by similar gestures, I notice.

“But not at the expense of flexibility!” shouts another Knight. “For instance, if you were making a move like this…” He shoots straight out of his seat and does a gravity-defying bit of parkour that takes him up the walls and across the ceiling while delivering a series of spinning kicks to the air. I’m gaping like a fool. Nobody else bats an eyelid.

“Impressed?” asks Slasheye, leaning over to me.

“Hur hur hur, I’ll bet she is. Watch this!” says Preeny Moustache, leaning even closer on my other side. He stands up, and with a flick and a spin, unholsters two sword-like weapons.

“Give me some of that dessert please, before you start dancing on the table.”

Slasheye makes a gesture with one hand and the dessert, a wobbly cream construction, comes flying across towards me. Unfortunately it collides with Preeny-Moustache’s demonstration, which has him launched across the table in the other direction.

Talks-to-Ghosts snatches some of the resulting cream explosion out of midair and hands it past Slasheye to me. “For you, my lady of chaos.”

Just then Kylo Ren walks in.

Everyone stops what they’re doing and straightens up except me, because my reflexes are slowed by creamy desserts. Kylo’s eyes slide over to me and his expression moves from disbelief to fury. The others look at me too, and they’re suddenly a lot less friendly. After a second Kylo turns to Hatun Doss and holds up a decorative-looking crystal pyramid. “We have work to do,” he says flatly.

Everyone pushes back from the table and grabs their helmets, moving to assemble around him. I might as well be invisible.

“Not Kylo’s good friend, then?” says Preeny-Moustache as he passes. “If you’ve got us in trouble, you’re going to pay for it.” His teeth flash in a sneer.

“You are only a good-weather friend yourself,” I say bitterly. “Run from trouble, are you?”

Talks-to-Ghosts stops besides me too. He’s staring at my ear as he says, “You wanted to see things. All the worlds. All the suns, all the people of the sky.”

I grab him the same way I’d grabbed Kylo that first day, and his gaze eventually drifts down to mine. “Yes,” I breathe. “You understand!” I tap my head. “Can you talk to me here? I don’t speak well your language.”

Kylo comes striding past, takes Talks-to-Ghosts roughly by the arm and pulls him away. “Leave her alone. She’s a parasite!”

Talks-to-Ghosts looks back over his shoulder as he’s dragged off and I get a deluge of visions, his visions. Wonderful things, terrible things, things from the deeps of time and things from futures yet unborn. He can see the future and the past. It leaves me reeling. Aloud he says only, “She’s a ghost. So I talk to her.” He looks down vaguely at Kylo’s hand on his arm, and Kylo drops it.

The Knights leave in a swirl of flapping cloaks and tunic tails. Kylo’s still so angry that he’s one big flounce of dramatic sweeping hemlines and bunched fists. His last look back at me cuts the air in a hot line. What on earth have I done?

I pick over the dessert and then wander off to do some more exploring. Ghost, am I? I certainly feel like one, in this empty place.

At the end of a staircase I haven’t seen before, I reach a pair of tall doors that open at my approach. Inside is what must be a library: shelves and shelves of neatly filed boxes, similar to the learning materials I’ve seen in my cadet classes. With a shout of joy, I run in. This could be my lucky day!

Ten minutes later I’m kicking the things around in a fury. The covers show a dazzling array of alien planets, alien creatures, alien spaceships and alien _aliens,_ but I can’t get them to work. None of the boxes are marked in a language I can read, and they don’t respond when I speak to them. I can open them, but after that they just sit there, inert lumps of technology I don’t understand. Now I’m the one in a rage, stomping off through more empty halls. Watchful droids turn to track me as I pass, but I meet nobody. No sign of Snoke. I don’t know what happened with him in the throne room, but clearly it wasn’t good. I reckon there’s something rotten brooding in the centre of this palace, behind the locked doors.

An archway in an upper corridor takes me outside to a place that is bit like a tennis court. I’ve entered halfway up the tiers of seating that surround it. Kylo and the Knights are below me, and they seem to be sparring. Kylo looks up once briefly and even through his mask I can feel the wave of hatred directed at me.

One of the men turns to Kylo and asks a question. Kylo snarls something and makes a chopping gesture with one hand. They turn away and Kylo squares the men up against each other. He seems to be training them. He’s a vile teacher, impatient and contemptuous. My blood runs cold as I watch and realise who I’ve been talking to: people who can defy gravity, or move faster than the eye can see. Kylo is a deadly warrior, fast as a scorpion and twice as mad.

That curious jewelled pyramid is sitting on a low pillar to one side of the courtyard. When the men stop for a breather, they stand in a circle around the pyramid and stare at it intently. There’s a bit of talk, then they resume their sparring.

One of the Knights activates a human-shaped opponent that is either a droid or a hologram - whatever it is, it’s covered in a flowing mirror surface. The men have weapons - Kylo the crackling red sword of flame I’ve seen before, and the others an assortment of things for hitting and shooting. The violence of their attacks is terrifying, even though all the blows seem to glance off its surface.

Kylo’s movements have a lethal beauty, but there’s no mistaking the fury behind them. If the Knights fall, he kicks them to their feet again. A few of them are limping, and blood leaks from their armour, enough to splatter on the sandy floor of the court.

I remember that black-gloved hand that’s just punched a Knight off his feet. Only a few nights ago it was tracing lines of heat across my collarbones, trailing fingers down to my nipples. A shudder moves my spine. Whether disgust at Kylo or at myself, I can’t tell.

I decide I’ll go for another wander. Maybe I can find one of those little droids and take it apart. Who knows what I might learn?


	19. Principia Mathematica

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Knights of Ren bring unexpected gifts
> 
>  
> 
> * * *

I have no luck hunting droids, but eventually I do run into Slasheye instead. He’s by himself, and his arm looks like it’s half hanging off at the shoulder. There’s a trail of blood down the corridor behind him.

“What the….Should not you look for a medbay? What happened to you?”

“I’m going there,” he says in his gruff voice. He seems remarkably stoic about his injuries. I guess that’s easier when your medical technology can just about bring you back from the dead. I’ve heard about bacta and what it can do. Still, his breath is hissing between his teeth and he’s paused to lean against the wall for a moment.

“I’ll go with you to the medbay. You should not walk around like that alone.”

He lifts a brow and snorts as though my offer surprises him, but lets me tag along to a new part of the complex.

“Why is your arm like that?”

“Lord Ren is training us in an ancient fighting technique.”

“Looks like you need to more practice,” I say.

“To practice more. Yes, but also Lord Ren is in a bad mood, even for him. We all got a beating.” He lowers his voice. “You seem to be the cause of his anger.”

“I’m sorry. He don’t say why he’s so annoyed to me.”

We arrive at the medbay, and I spend the next half hour hanging breathlessly over Slasheye’s arm while a droid doctor treats it with a combination of painkillers, support prosthetics and bacta. It’s absolutely fascinating, though gross, watching the flesh around the wound swell with healing tissues as though I’m watching a time-lapse film. Very quickly the arm, now with a flexible supporting brace around it, is functional.

I’m rather lost in this place, so afterwards I follow Slasheye back to the accommodation wing.

“Does anyone live here apart from Snoke?”

“Not usually,” says Slasheye.

“What does he do all day?” I ask, but Slasheye doesn’t answer. Suddenly a door opens and Talks-to-Ghosts steps out. He’s holding a pair of datapads like the ones I’d found in the library. “You’ll be wanting these,” he says.

“Will I?” I take them and shake my head, frowning. There’s no pictures on the covers, just formal designs embossed in gold and a title in a script I don’t know.

Slasheye looks over my shoulder. “What language is that? One of your old Sith ones, Talksie?”

“Whatever it is, _I_ can’t read it,” I say.

Talks-to-Ghosts takes back one of the datapads, says a hissing word, and a menu screen rises up over it. He does a flick-and-scroll gesture, stabs at a line of Aurabesh that appears, and hands it back to me. I run my hand over the outer cover and a cool female voice says in Basic, “Hyperdrive Basic Theory and Design”.

I think I may have screamed and grabbed him, and possibly even danced him around. Slasheye pulls me off, waving at the air between us as though to dispel something. “Thank the Maker you don’t have the Force. You’d have so much light I’d have to kill you,” he says.

“Show me how you did that!” I say, dancing on my toes. I’m out of breath and laughing. Talks-to-Ghosts makes me repeat the word and find the menu screen on the other datapad. This one’s Advanced Mathematics from XXX to XXX. Of course I can barely understand any of it - it’s a whole new script. But the explanations are in Aurabesh, the book speaks Basic, and there’s an index and glossary of mathematical concepts beginning from first principles. I can learn from it.

I’m holding the Principia Mathematica of this galaxy in my hands, and the key to spaceflight. I nearly knock Talks-to-Ghosts over, dancing around the room and hugging the datapads to my chest. “No really, I want to hug _you.”_

“Nobody hugs Talksie,” says Slasheye. Indeed, Talksie just bobs awkwardly out of my grasp.

“These books must be so valuable…won’t somebody be wanting them?” I say, once I can speak at all.

Talksie freezes for so long that I think he’s gone into some sort of epileptic fit. He’s simply not there. Then he comes back to life and says, “Oh, your daughter. She’s looking for them under your bed. She loves these and reads them a thousand times, and she’ll understand them.”

“I don’t have a daughter.”

“You will.”

I stare at Talksie, open mouthed. He grins and twiddles one of the tassels on his costume, looking suddenly shy.

I look over at Slasheye, whose pale eyes show a gleam of amusement. “Can he really see the future?”

“Often,” Slasheye says. “But it’s usually not much use.”

“I’ll…have a daughter?” I ask Talksie. I feel like I’ve stepped into a pit. My stomach is weightless and I don’t know what’s true anymore.

“If you marry the right man.”

“I thought I did,” I say. There’s something about the way these two men can see my secrets that makes it pointless to conceal things any more. My former self isn’t dead after all. At least, not to them. “But he’s in a mental ward back home, or was last time I saw him,” I say.

Talks-to-Ghosts leans in and I feel the now-familiar flash of the Force ripping through my memories. “Yes, he is the one.”

Again I find myself flat on my back after that mental assault. It’s not just the way Talks-to-Ghosts is able to yank out any memory he wants. It’s what he’s exposed: All the memories I’ve tried to bury. Not even Kylo saw them. The truth is, when I was kidnapped by pirates, I wasn’t hiking for fun and fitness. I was hiking because life had just gone horribly, horribly wrong for myself and those closest to me, and I’d run like a wounded animal needing to hide from what I did, what was done to me, and what I wasn’t strong enough to bear. I’ve denied my past, and I’ve made myself into a new person, a person whose past is a million light years away.

Yet Talksie’s words waken a hope I haven’t felt in years. If the future he’s seen is true, then somehow one day I’ll go home. Even though I haven’t got a map yet, or the key to release a man from the prisons in his mind. Anything seems possible.

Slasheye snorts and slaps me on the back. “I knew there was a reason I liked you. You’re a friend of us crazies.”

I heft the datapads in each hand like a weightlifter. They weigh as much as my future. “Well, I’d better go bust my ex out of there. Can you Knights give me a ride out of here when you leave?” I have no idea what I’m doing, but getting out of Snoke’s stronghold is an obvious first move.

“Hah, no,” said Slasheye. “The rest of them will scrag you if they catch you. They blame you for the thrashing we got today.”

“Great. So I have to persuade Kylo to take me? He hates me.”

Slasheye shrugs. “He doesn’t much like anyone. Though if he really did hate you he’d have killed you already.”

“So what, he likes me?”

Slasheye shrugs again. “You’re still alive, aren’t you? Don’t go thinking you can fix him, though.”

I nod and give them both an air-hug before skipping off to my room, stopping to knock on Kylo’s door before I lose my nerve. No response. Once I’m in my room I test the books out, making sure I can get them to answer. _Just one little look at the index and glossary, see what I’m up against…_

If I can get these home, this knowledge will be priceless, and I’ll be the only one able to interpret it. I’ll be able to ask for anything I want. With better medical care, my ex could be free again. We’d have those children. A daughter, a child who’ll swim through the contents of these datapads like a fish in water.

By the time I remember to look up again, it’s dark and I’m so thirsty my tongue feels sticky. There’s only a rusty dribble of disgusting water from the taps in my room, so I head out to find something better.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * * *  
> More Kylo next chapter, I promise. We can't just leave him to his own devices forever.


	20. So Damn Happy

A long session in the refresher does a lot to repair Kylo’s pains after a long day of fight training. But he’s far from happy as he steps out, washed and dried and stinging with bacta patches. The Knights are slow learners, the holocron is cryptic, and he is next to useless. If he could just smash something!

The dark side of the Force has a strong presence on Snoke's planet, but it’s as changeable as the sea, sometimes buoying him up with its power, sometimes, like today, merely oppressive.

It doesn’t seem to bother the other Knights. Nothing bothers them. Their ability to care about things was beaten out of them long before they finished childhood. They’re good men to have at his back; stoic in the face of hardship, and careless of danger. He should be proud of to lead them. 

There was a time when he’d thought the Knights would be his family, a real family of people like him. They could share things about themselves: how they discovered the Force, how they’d always known they were special. He’d told them how his parents had always been away, or fighting, filling the rooms around them with tension. The first time he used the Force, it was to break that tension, as though it was a physical object he could destroy.

It really, really hadn’t helped. Leia had looked horrified and Han….ashamed. If he’d thought the tension at home was bad before, it was ten times worse after he discovered the Force.

Slasheye had nodded sympathetically at Kylo’s story. “My mother threw me in a dumpster once,” he said. “It was just for fun, but she went on a binge and forgot about me for a week. Lucky some streetkids found me and hauled me out.”

“Why’d you kill them, then?” asked Mortreck. Slasheye didn’t answer, just reached across with the Force and slammed Mortreck’s face into the table.

“He killed his mother too,” said Talks-to-Ghosts.

“Yeah, but I was older then,” said Slasheye. “That slut.”

Mortreck’s question had almost made Kylo curious enough to search Slasheye’s memories with the Force, but after that he thought better of it. He’s seen some of the horrors in Talks-to-Ghosts’ childhood and he’s got no appetite to know how Slasheyes’ history compares. Both men have the Force in ways that frighten him at times - and even frighten Snoke, he suspects. But neither of them can control their Force powers worth a damn.

Mortreck had continued the conversation, evidently under the impression it was some kind of competition. “I strangled a woman with her own hair once, using the Force. You should have seen her face. She couldn’t work out what was happening, hur hur hur!”

Hatun Doss had continued chewing stolidly through some big meaty meal, like always. “No need to show off. If you want somebody dead, you kill them,” he said mildly.

That was the last time Kylo tried to have a serious conversation with them. The only ones he feels any empathy for are Slasheye and his crazy friend, and what does that say about him?

He lies back on the tatty splendour of the bed which is the room’s main comfort. It’s so big even Kylo can get lost in the mountains of quilts. He reaches out with the Force and finds Snoke, tangible as a kind of storm cloud wrapped up in darkness. It’s reassuring to know he’s nearby, channeling the dark side. At least it’s working for _somebody._

A flash of light tweaks his consciousness.

 _Oh. The girl._ Her, with her hateful, unsquashable optimism. She’s happy about something, as usual. How easy life must be for her, hopping through life and pecking at every shiny object she sees like a demented bird. In this labyrinthine palace of darkness she can’t even sense, she’s found something to interest her. It’s filled her with purpose and excitement.

He shouldn’t wonder what she’s up to. But she’s like a zit. The more he tries to ignore her, the worse the temptation to pick, pick, pick…

He reaches out with the Force. He definitely won’t talk to her, he’ll just see what she’s doing…

He can’t talk to her anyway. She’s lost in some dazzling world made entirely of numbers. She truly is an alien.


	21. A Drowned Rat

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warning for implied mention of rape
> 
>  
> 
> * * *

Something wakes Kylo early, while it is still dark. There’s a meeting with Snoke later on. Kylo’s supposed to report on the holocron and the Knights’ training. Maybe that’s all that’s put him on edge. He gets up and dresses in a dark shirt and leggings. A long run in the desert at sunrise is the best cure for nerves. He chooses a pair of light shoes instead of his usual boots.

He’s like a shadow gliding along the silent corridors and stairways. At intervals, tall windows show the hallucinogenic dawn outside, violet brightening slowly to a smouldering orange smear on the eastern horizon. He’s nearly at the exit when, turning the last corner, there’s a shaft of ruby light from the nearest window. It illuminates something dark huddled on the floor.

It’s the girl. She’s curled up, nearly naked, with her wet hair making a snaky tangle around her face. When he bends down to touch her, her skin is so cold she must surely be dead. It is only the rich light of the dawn that gives her skin the semblance of life. He pauses, rocking on his heels. There are faint bruises on her arms and legs. His eyes rest on the unnatural stillness of her face.

 _Who did this?_ The Knights, of course. It looks like his problems have been solved for him.

 _But what if they did it to get at him? What if they used her like_ …he blocks that thought. Kylo’s not sure about many of his feelings, but right now rage is definitely in there somewhere. She’s not their toy. _How dare they?_

He reaches out again, this time to brush aside her hair and press two fingers on the pulse point in her throat.

And there it is, slow and irregular, but still there: a heartbeat. He has a sudden flash of memory, of waking in Snoke’s throne room to find their positions reversed. Her leaning over him, eyes filled with concern, checking his pulse and wiping his face clean of blood. He rocks back on his heels again, considering what to do.

He becomes aware of a sound. The corridors are not empty after all: he can hear slurred and tuneless singing, getting closer. It’s no surprise to see Slasheye come lurching around the corner, red-eyed and with crumbs in his beard. Kylo stands to face him, and he teeters to a halt.

“Lor’ Ren.”

“Slasheye. You disgust me. You know alcohol and the Force don’t mix.”

Slasheye’s in his most invulnerable state of inebriation. He merely waves expansively and toasts Kylo with an invisible glass. “I reck’n more reshearch needs to be done. Ish all very well saying they don’ mix, but who’sh tried?” Then he notices the girl at Kylo’s feet, and his voice turns aggressive. “Whash happened here? Whaddya do to her?” When he looks back at Kylo, his eyes are even redder. The stones of the walls shift uneasily and little spurts of mortar run out from between them, stirred by Slasheye’s barely-controlled Force.

“I was going to ask you that,” says Kylo, tensing. Slasheye is enough of a catastrophe any time he uses the Force, without adding drink into the mix.

Slasheye relaxes slightly, swaying. “Mortreck and his frien’s, maybe. They blame her fo’ the foul mood you were in yesterday.” He brightens. “Look at me, though. I’m a good guy! You nearly took my arm off an’ you don’t see _me_ getting all tokshic an’ an’ an’ … _. feca_ l about it. Now, another drink an’ it’ll hardly hurt at all.”

“Where’s Talks-to-Ghosts? Was he part of this…assault?”

“Nah, he went outside hours ago. Says the desert had something to tell him. He had to fin’ a rock, he said.”

“Well, there’s plenty of rocks. I hope he took some water.” No point asking if Talks-to-Ghosts will be back in time for training. He barely functions within normal time at all. “Take the girl to the medbay,” Kylo snaps.

Slasheye waves a hand, and the girl is suddenly upright but limp, her feet trailing just above the ground. “Come along!” he says brightly, and gives her a Force-push that sends her weaving down the corridor before careening her into the wall. “Oops!” He tries again, and this time she’s bumping along on her knees, shins scraping the floor.

“Stop it, you kriffing fool! I’ll take her,” snarls Kylo, catching up with them in a couple of strides. He scoops the girl into his arms and stomps off towards the medbay. He can hear Slasheye behind him heading the other way, humming to himself. Maker knows what will happen if Slasheye meets Snoke. In the state he’s in, Slasheye might do anything, from serenading him to offering him a drink.

“I don’t want to see you again til you’re sober!” Kylo shouts back over his shoulder. “Go find Talks-to-Ghosts before he gets lost or starves to death.”

“I’ll take him something to drink. Defin’ly drink,” agrees Slasheye.

The girl's so cold in Kylo's arms, she’s like a statue of a girl. As he passes under the windows the thick orange light of the risen sun makes her skin look like gold. Her young face is turned towards his, at peace. He has memories of the body he touched once in the dark, now lit up for his inspection. No secrets now. Her breasts are clearly outlined under the damp First Order-issue bra. He doesn’t feel desire - she’s too cold to feel like a real girl - but he can’t be sorry he had that night with her, warm and alive.

At the medbay, the medtech droid takes her from his arms with its usual efficiency, sprouting limbs and sensors as needed. He watches it lower her into a medical cot and run scanners over her.

“What are her injuries?” he asks, once the triage seems to be over and the droid is inserting tubes in her arms.

“Hypothermia consistent with prolonged immersion in cold water. Mild bruising on her arms and legs.”

“Any… _internal_ injuries?” he asks, his fists clenching and even his toes, inside his shoes, following suit. _If Hatun Doss and the others have used her for ..._

But he can’t even finish the thought, let alone ask the droid for details.

“She has not inhaled any significant amount of water,” says the droid, sticking a cardiac device over the girl’s heart. “She is suffering from exhaustion, but is otherwise in optimal health. We will bring her core temperature up to normal, stabilise her cardiac function, and normalise her blood sugar and electrolyte balances”

“Good, good,” says Kylo, letting out his breath in a gust. The med techs here would notice if she’d been assaulted in … _that_ way. They’re nothing if not thorough.

“She will be ready for collection by evening.”

Blocking the last sentence out of his mind, Kylo spins on his heel and races out. There’s still time to get in a good run before he meets with Snoke.


	22. A Drink of Water

By the time I remember to look up from the datapads again, it’s dark and I’m so thirsty my tongue feels sticky. There’s only a rusty dribble of disgusting water from the taps in my room, so I head out to find something better. None of the rooms on this floor have working taps, though I don’t try Kylo’s door — it’s pointless to make conversation when my is head so stuffed with new concepts. My thirst is urgent, and I take the stairs down to a lower floor. Rounding a corner, I walk straight into some of the Knights.

“Where do you think you’re going?” says one, whose name I never caught.

“Looking for a drink of water.”

“We can help you with that. Hur hur hur,” says the class clown, and steps forward, too close.

“No, it’s fine, I’m….” I look around desperately to see if Slasheye or Talks-to-Ghosts are there, but they’re not. “I think maybe Kylo was…”

But no saving lie springs off my tongue, and there’s no stopping the men who crowd around me. I don’t even think of struggling. There’s four of them, and I’ve seen the violence they can do without even touching someone. In their grasp, my bones feel as fragile as straws. They pick me up, laughing, and carry me down a flight of stairs and into some kind of plant room filled with silent hulking machinery. There’s a deep square hole in the middle of the floor. Its smooth sides plunge down out of sight into darkness.

They start to swing me out over it. I catch a glimpse of something reflecting my flailing form. It seems a long way down

“One, two, three!” they shout, and on the third swing they throw me in. “In you go. Drink up!”

After a heartstopping moment I hit water. The men leave, switching off the light as they go. Now I’m in near darkness, in a deep trough or pool of some kind. I can’t touch the bottom. Worse, I can’t reach the top either, for the sides rise at least two metres above the surface. There’s no noise but the slap of the ripples echoing off the flat walls, and the sound of more water trickling in somewhere. The room has the same abandoned air as the rest of this place. There’s no reason to think anyone ever comes here.

Well, at least I got my drink.

Treading water, I search the walls with my hands, looking for any way to climb out. There’s a shelf or slot all the way round the walls at surface level. The waves I make as I splash around slosh over the lip and disappear somewhere, just like a swimming pool. With difficulty, I manage to wedge myself into a corner, push my feet into the slot, and stand up, teetering for balance. From there I try to jump up and grab the edge of the pool above me. But I can’t reach. I try again and again, but I’m nowhere near reaching. Each time I fall back flailing into the tank. I can’t afford to give up, but after twenty or thirty tries I have to recognise that my jumps are becoming weaker and weaker. I’ll never make it.

I take my boots and pants and tunic off and shove them into the slot so it’s easier to float for a while, resting. I can stay afloat forever. That’s not a problem. But if I don’t keep moving, I’ll get colder and colder until I lose consciousness.

The water settles and the silence becomes oppressive. Just that trickle of water coming in. It runs down one wall of the tank from a channel in the floor above, fanning across the duracrete and making it slimy.

If water’s coming in, then it must also go out. Otherwise the water level would rise. If I can block the exit…

I swim around the tank again, this time feeling all the way to the back of the slot in the walls. Sure enough, there is a hole, a pipe, draining the water out. Excited now, I grab my clothes from where I’ve stashed them and swim them over to the pipe. One boot is enough to almost fill the outflow. I pack my tunic around it. It’s not quite enough, so I stuff my socks around it and my shirt as well.

Now there’s nothing to do but wait. I lie flat and still as a crocodile on the surface of the water with my nose up against the side, watching. Long, anxious minutes pass with the water still sloshing over the lip and into the slot. Is it escaping still? Is there another outflow that I missed?

And then the sound of the water purling over the lip becomes less. The slot is filling up. More long minutes pass, and then I’m sure: the water level is rising. I’m getting cold, so I dog-paddle around a few laps to warm up. Once I’ve done that and paused to let the water settle, I’m sure: the surface is higher than the outflow. I swim round some more, and next time I stop the outflow slot is underwater.

How long will it take? I look up at the top of the tank. Hours. I have no way to measure time, but I can tell that much. I’m good at maths, after all. Hours and hours, while the water creeps up the sides. I have to keep swimming, just enough to keep warm, not enough to exhaust myself.

I can do it, if I don’t give up. Just keep swimming.

The hours creep by and my limbs get heavier and heavier. As the water level rises, I can stand half-floating with my feet wedged in the outflow slot and my arms wrapped around me for warmth. But it’s a deadly trap to keep still for too long. I can calculate the calories I need to burn to keep warm. I can estimate my body fat. How many kilojoules per kilo? I can calculate how much energy I’ll generate swimming. I have more than I need. The numbers are in my favour, though the sums become harder and harder to do. My brain is slowing. But I must keep moving, even when I can’t think any more.

 _Keep swimming_. I imagine I am myself a torch, burning in the dark, burning myself up to keep warm. There’ll be less of me by the time I get out (how much less? Let’s run those figures again!) but there’s no reason I can’t make it, so long as I don’t give up.

I’m just so tired. I can no longer think straight. I keep myself going by imagining what I’ll say to Kylo Ren if I see him again. I did nothing wrong, and he abandoned me to be attacked by his wolves. Why? Did I make him look bad or something? _Vain, petty, arrogant, faithless, selfis_ h...just let me get out of here and I’ll let him have it.

The end is the worst. I have no idea of the time any more. The water’s risen too high for me to rest on the outflow slot, and I’m forced to keep swimming slow laps around the tank. Finally I can reach up to the lip of the pool, but I have no strength to pull myself out. It’s so tempting to just hang from my fingertips, to relax completely. Five times my hands slip off, and on the fifth I almost don’t come up for air again. It’s too much work, and for a long moment I wonder lazily if breathing water is really that bad.

But then I’ll lose the secrets of hyperspace. I won’t get to meet my daughter and show her the sun and the moon and the beautiful equations that lead to the stars. I want to see the sun again so badly.

I keep swimming and swimming until finally I can stretch my numb arms over the stone coping, lift my leaden legs over too, one at a time, and tumble onto the floor beside the pool.

I could have stayed there forever. Every limb aches and I’m wracked by deep spasming shivers. But it’s freezing, and my clothes are stuffed into the outlet of the pool, two metres underwater. I only have my underclothes.

After some time I realise that if I don’t move the pool will overflow onto me and I will freeze to death and possibly drown as well. No telling how far the water might spread after that. I have some vague idea this will cause trouble, so I start crawling away with the thought of removing myself from the crime. I struggle up the steps to the door and make it out along the corridor, but only as far as a slowly brightening pool of violet light falling from a window above. A mere whisper of the illusion of warmth, but it’s too attractive to resist. I pass out for the second time in Snoke’s stronghold.


	23. Knights in Training

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Kylo's happier when it's somebody else who's failing. Like most people...
> 
> * * *

Kylo’s not surprised to find that Slasheye and Talksie don’t make it to training that day. Presumably they’re off in the desert somewhere. Nobody mentions the girl, but the remaining four Knights have an air of smugness that confirms Kylo’s suspicions. _If they think they can lay hands on her without my permission, they have another think coming…_

“We’re going to learn to deflect blaster bolts using our lightsabers today,” Kylo tells them. “The holocron’s shown me the technique, so I’ll demonstrate.”

Kylo’s heard the accounts, seen footage even, of his grandfather striding through lines of blaster fire, carelessly striking it aside. The first time he saw it, he was shaken with longing. To have such power, and to use it with such casual certainty! It’s nothing like the way Luke has tried to teach him, the Jedi Way that hedges everything with caution. Now that the holocron’s yielding its secrets to him, Kylo’s sure he can find the way to Vader’s path.

In the training courtyard, he instructs the Knights to aim at him again and again, blasters first set to stun, then to full power. It’s just as the holocron showed him; with the right focus, he can toss the blasts aside just like Vader did. After an hour of practice, it’s almost child’s play to deflect them. His lightsaber arm is aching but he barely feels it.

“Now it’s your turn,” he says. “If you were paying attention, you will have sensed how I did that.”

The Knights have less success. All of them prefer other weapons to their lightsabers, and it shows. They don’t have the focus, or don’t feel the way they need to shape the Force around them.

“You’ll never connect with your lightsaber if you don’t practice!” Kylo shouts, for what seems like the umpteenth time. “What do you think the kyber crystals are? Lumps of glass?” He aims a shot at Hatun Doss, and Doss only half manages to counter it, leaving him with a burn across his thigh. “This is why we train!”

One by one, the Knights take hits that render them incapacitated. Kylo’s glad he’s had the foresight to have medical gurneys hovering in the wings, ready to take casualties to the medbay.

Eventually he’s left on his own. Too bad about the Knights. They’ll catch up eventually. Or maybe not. Meanwhile there’s another skill he wants to master, one the holocron hinted was possible. He sets up a training droid to fire on his command, and puts away his lightsaber.

“Aim for my hand,” he says. The droid fires. Kylo draws on the Force, and time seems to slow until the blaster’s beam becomes a ball of light, a toy he can bat aside with no effort.

“Again,” he says. This time he freezes the beam in place. The next time, he bounces it back to the droid and watches it explode. He’s using raw Force, with no intermediary lightsaber or kyber crystal. The sense of power, of connection with everything makes him almost lightheaded. _This is who I was meant to be!_

He stretches out the tension in his shoulders and walks jauntily back to his room.  
  



	24. Medbay

Some commotion wakes me. I’m in a tank. Glass. An aquarium, something with water? The room comes into focus. It’s the medbay and I’m in a kind of incubator. No water, and what a relief that is.

Droids are ushering Hatun Doss to a bed. Seeing me, his eyes narrow slightly and he breaks free of the droids and lunges towards me. He punches the plasteel over my face so it flexes and cracks. Even when he allows the medical droids to lead him away, he keeps staring at me, his slabby face set into hostile lines. Luckily a medtech injects him with something and his eyelids droop. 

I can’t keep awake either, though. My incubator is so deliciously warm and humid.

I’m woken again some time later by Preeny-moustache being carried in. He appears to be seriously burned in places. Training with Kylo’s not going well, it seems. 

He catches sight of me. “What’s she doing here?” he asks Hatun Doss, who’s in the next bed to mine. Hatun Doss cracks an eye open and grimaces. Preeny-Moustache turns back to me. “Why are you still alive?”

“I have secret knowledge,” I say. 

Doss rolls his eyes. “Sure. And a secret talisman, blah blah.”

“That too,” I agree. In fact I have a bronze medal from the local surf lifesaving club at home. I never knew the life I’d save was my own, but still. 

“Finish her off, Mortreck,” says Doss. Preeny-moustache grunts and pulls out a blaster weapon from his slashed and burned armour.

“Help! Droids! Medtech! He’s going to kill me!” I yell feebly. 

A droid comes whirring over to us. “You may experience excitability and disorientation under the influence of stressful and injurious events,” it says soothingly, before sticking Mortreck with a syringe. Mortreck drops the blaster from hands that have suddenly become limp. Two more droids help load him into a bed. 

“Just you wait,” says Doss. One of the droids sticks him too. I’m glad I don’t have to continue that conversation.

“I think I’m ready to be discharged,” I tell the lead medtech. It runs some sensors over me and disagrees. I’m strapped down in my crib, so I can’t object. They must be used to trouble in this medbay, I think, testing my restraints. I’m not going anywhere. I fantasise blearily about getting some of that spotted moss I found in the landing bay and seeing if it’ll dissolve Mortreck’s moustaches. Then the droids tank me up with some of their dope for good measure. It looks like it’s going to be a race to see who can regain consciousness first. If the men wake up first, I’m pretty sure I won’t get to wake up at all.

Eventually though, the medtechs have to throw me out because a fourth Knight is brought in unconscious and all the beds are full. I wake up as a droid is withdrawing a syringe from my neck full of something that’s jolted me back to life. 

“You are not ready to be left unattended, but the medbay is full,” says the lead medtech. “Where shall we discharge you?” 

“Uh.” I rack my brains, wondering who’s least likely to kill me. “Take me to Talks-to-Ghosts please?”

“You must avoid physical exertion for the next 24 standard hours,” says the lead medtech, aiming yet another syringe at me. They’re really not taking any chances. The last thing I remember, I’m being loaded onto a floating gurney and guided out of the medbay.


	25. A Little Warmth

There’s a note on Kyo’s bed, written with what seems to be an ink pen. Talks-to-Ghosts seems like the only person who would own such an archaic thing, along with his collection of weird curiosities.. The script is so fussy and ornamented he almost gives up on it, thinking it’s another one of Talksie’s forgotten Sith languages. But after squinting at it for a moment he realises the words are in aurabesh after all, though it’s so encrusted with ye-olde-worlde flourishes and signs of power that it’s hard to tell.

“No thanks,” it says.

 _No thanks for what?_ Kylo snorts, shaking his head, and goes off to coax some hot water out of the refresher. His muscles have the good burn of hard work and success. Maybe Snoke will be pleased this time.

Outside his windows, the tired sun sends low shafts of light to redden the dust haze. It’s nearly sunset. Halfway through his shower, the lights go out. Not uncommon in this old pile of a palace. The drier doesn’t work either and he’s forced to dry himself on a questionable-smelling square of fabric he finds in a cupboard. The bedroom is filled with dim violet light from outside as he drops heavily onto the mountainous bed and reaches for the coverlets.

They squirm out of his reach with a yelp.

Kylo lunges across and pulls them back. It’s the girl.

She half opens her eyes and says, “Huh?”

“What are you doing here?” he hisses.

“Uh. Kylo? What? I asked them to take me Talksie’s room. Isn’t this…?” She strains to look around the darkened room. It’s clear she can barely manage even this small movement.

“Talks-to-Ghosts?” he says, angry for about five different reasons he can’t identify.

“The medbay haves not enough beds. Full of…..Knights of Ren. They try me to kill me once already. Not how can I defend myself when sleep?” Her speech is turning into word salad. From experience, Kylo knows that the medbay droids in this place believe in using narcotics liberally and often. It’s a matter of self-preservation they’ve learned from frequent dealings with chaotic Force users.

Already she’s sinking back into unconsciousness. “You. Knight of Ren. Don’t kill me. Not fair.”

 _Fair? When was life ever fair?_ Kylo finds a fresh pair of pants in the pile on the floor, pulls them on and goes to hammer on Talks-to-Ghosts’ door. No reply, so he shoves it open.

Talks-to-Ghosts is visible as a silhouette against the mauve sky outside his window. In front of him is a table cluttered with datapads and holocrons and handcrafted junk from a dozen worlds. His chin is propped up on his hands and he’s staring at possibly the least interesting thing on the table, a featureless round stone.

As usual, Talks-to-Ghosts’ awareness of Kylo comes a beat later than expected, but what is more unexpected is the expression on his face when he meets Kylo’s gaze at last. He’s angry. Even as Kylo strides across the room, Talks-to-Ghosts is standing up. “How dare you!” he shouts.

“How dare I what? I’m your leader, Talks-to-Ghosts, I can …”

“That doesn’t mean I have to take your cast-offs!”

“What?!”

Kylo makes a grab at him but he slides aside, still shouting. “How dare you just give me the girl! Do you think that’s going to make me normal?” Kylo manages to collar him, and Talks-to-Ghosts sneers in his face. “That was supposed to do what? _‘Ground me’?_ Make me like other people? That’s insulting. What if I don’t _want_ to be like other people?”

“I don’t care what you want. You’ll remember who I am!”

As quickly as it came, Talks-to-Ghosts’ anger is gone. His eyes slide past Kylo’s, looking into some nonexistent space, and he sinks to his knees, pulling Kylo down into an awkward stoop. The small objects on the table beside them start to quiver and dance with the unfocused Force in the room. “My lord,” Talks-to-Ghosts breathes softly, staring over Kylo’s shoulder. “She will come. I wait for her, and her only. We will live to see all things, all things changed.”

“Who?” asks Kylo, pulling himself out of Talks-to-Ghosts’ grip so he can stand up.

“Don’t try to distract me with your concerns,” says Talks-to-Ghosts, snapping into the present. “She’s your responsibility.”

“I didn’t _give_ you the girl, as you put it. She _asked_ to be brought here from the medbay. She clearly underestimated how sarlacc-shit crazy you are.”

Talks-to-Ghosts isn’t listening. Standing up, he makes a curt gesture that pulls half the junk in the room into a whirlwind around him. Kylo leaves him there, standing in a Force-tornado of holocrons and hairballs like the mad shaman he is.

Back to his own room, then, which is filled now with watery pink moonlight. The bed is big, and the girl is a snoring lump curled in one corner. He needn’t even touch her. Except —

That time he went to bed with her hadn’t been bad. If he’s honest with himself, it had been…quite good.

 _“Take that one! It’s all you’ll get._ ” Snoke’s words could be construed as permission. As a command, even.

Kylo hitches himself across the bed so he’s sitting in the middle, behind her back. He reaches out and pulls down the covers. Places a hand on the curve of one shoulder. There are fine ridges like scars on her skin, invisible in the near dark. He runs his fingertips over them curiously, but can’t make out the pattern.

“Snerfle,” she says, or something like it, and wriggles down deeper into the covers before going back to sleep. Kylo pauses a moment, then lifts the feathery ticklish mass of her hair aside from the pillow and lays his head beside her, pulling the bedclothes around both of them. He inhales the scent of her hair, which is deeply familiar: the scent of the medbay, of _this particular_ medbay, where he has spent much time.

Whenever he’s visited Snoke’s stronghold, he’s lain alone in the faded splendour of this old room. In this place, he is the child of Fortune, chosen to be here by history and fate. These were once the halls of greatness, and he can dream of how he and Snoke will make them great again. But at the moment, it’s a neglected room, its previous inhabitants long dead and whatever glory they gleaned in their lives long forgotten.

The empty bed is improved by having the girl in it, a ball of radiant heat, her hair luxuriously soft against his cheek. The bed’s worn magnificence can’t compare with the plush curves of her body, the fresh, slightly medicinal smell of her skin, and as he wraps himself around her, he’s happy she’s here, and she’s _this,_ and not the wet frozen body he found on the floor this morning.


	26. I Wake in His Arms

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's one thing to sleep with a person when you don't know what they're capable of. Now Narrator Girl has seen Kylo training with the Knights, she can't hide from the unpleasant truth.
> 
>  
> 
> * * *

I’d like to roll over, but something’s pinned my hair to the pillow. Some big, warm weight is…

Oh. It’s Kylo.

A slow chill runs down my spine and I have to suppress a shudder.

I’d been so angry at him. The way he’d turned on me when I had done nothing wrong. The injustice has been burning me up. But faced with the terrifying reality of his physical presence, I can’t believe I’d been planning to knock on his door and have it out with him. Not after seeing the Knights who’d come into the medbay after me. They’d been _badly_ injured, and they’d been wearing heavy armour. I am almost naked. One of Kylo’s huge hands is wrapped around my ribs, easily covering half my side. I remember the savage speed of him as he crossed the training courtyard in a couple of strides, spinning his fiery death weapon with careless ease before cutting down his opponents in a few brutal slashes.

I must not wake him. I don’t want an angry killer waking up next to me.

The windows flush with a salmon-coloured dawn as I lie motionless in the vast shabby hulk of a bed, trying to get my head around the fact that the person who’s spent the last few days giving me death stares is now wrapped around me like a burrito, snoring gently.

Now I remember he woke me up during the night. Did we talk? I have the impression he was still angry. I weigh up my chances of making a run for it. But then what? The murderous Knights of Ren are out there somewhere. I also don’t want to spend the rest of my life stranded in this complex with Kylo’s master. I’d like my life to be a bit longer than any possible future I can imagine with Snoke.

It’s a shame Slasheye and Talks-to-Ghosts don’t have their own ship, but since they don’t, the only way off this planet is through Kylo.

I turn fractionally so I can watch him sleep. I can’t see much: his long nose with its dagger-blade curve is pressed into my shoulder, and there’s a lot of hair in the way. So glossy. I resist the urge to tidy the tousled mop into the sleek black waves I’ve admired before. He is one of the most beautiful men I’ve ever seen, at least from this close. He’s not conventionally good-looking; he’s far more fascinating than that. How he stands out, striding through the cold, ordered world of the Finalizer! His passionate, barely controlled power burns like a firebrand. A magic man, in command of forces I don’t understand.

I shouldn’t really be thinking this way at all, but then I feel his lips moving against my arm, tickling me with warm air as he murmurs something unintelligible. Words like butterfly kisses, sending shivers up and down my spine.

But he’s not talking to me. He’s not even awake. I can feel his lashes trembling against my skin, and, screwing my neck into an awkward angle, I can see his eyes moving under their lids. He’s dreaming.

And it’s not a good dream. His hands tighten convulsively, squeezing my ribs and my wrist where he’s holding me. His lips pull back from his teeth, big teeth that dent my skin. There’s a look of fear on his face, terrifyingly close to mine. He gasps, seemingly trying to throw off the nightmare. But he can’t.

Oh, I’ve been here before. Sat up wakeful nights, the self-appointed guardian warding off nightmares. None shall pass.

So I loosen his grip and turn to cradle his face in my hands, patting his cheeks. “You’re here, you’re safe, none of it is real.”

His eyes fly open, black holes of terror inches away from my own. “Who are you?” he says blankly, still in the grip of his nightmare.

“The watchman,” I say, out of old habit. “Wake up. It’s safe here. I’m here.”

Kylo’s eyes focus on me, making us both slightly cross-eyed. “Oh. It’s you.”

His skin looks pale, and its dusting of freckles stand out more than usual. His face falls naturally into lines of sadness, like one of those dogs that have perpetually worried expressions. Some people have resting bitch-face. Kylo has resting worry-face. I lay my hand on his forehead to see if I can flatten his eyebrows out of their concerned-looking peaks. He takes my hand and gives my wrist a gentle, experimental bite.

“You don’t seem angry at me today,” I say, keeping my voice neutral and the rest of me tensed for a sudden dash to safety. But Kylo merely snorts, his long mouth quirked into a twist of disgust. Apparently the Kylo of two days ago is just some fool we should forget about. This is the new Kylo. I’d better make the best of it.

We lie face to face, and desire is uncurling in me like a fern opening its hard little fists in my loins. 

I have a dilemma.

“Can Talksie really see the future?” I ask.

Another snort from Kylo, amused this time. “He once foresaw the beginning of life in the galaxy. Came running out to tell the rest of the Knights about it. We were so impressed.” I must look completely blank, because Kylo explains, “He spends so much time in the past that he’s never sure what’s already happened.”

Suddenly I feel less certain about Talksie’s predictions. There may be futures where I never get home, or ones where the man who was once the centre of my world will never recover enough for us to have a child together…

It’s doubly confusing because the path to my once and future lover is through this man in front of me. It’s far too convenient, how comfortably my desires align with what I need to do to get out of here.

Every loving act I do here in the present could wait in my future like an landmine. It’ll be the lie concealed in the stories I’ll tell, ready to blow up in my face. “So tell me, how did you get off Snoke’s planet? Why did this ‘leader of the Knights of Ren’ take you with him?”

I could pretend it’s not my choice to make, but I won’t lie to myself: I will always know whether I resisted or not. And I don’t want to resist. Not when Kylo’s running his hands, with their wide, warm palms, down my arms, up to my shoulders, and then down my back, and I’m arching to meet the touch. There’s still the echo of the bad dream in Kylo’s eyes, too, and I want to drive it out. I won’t let anybody suffer in the shadowlands that way.

I pull his face towards me and kiss him deeply, picking up where we left off all those nights ago in the pitch-black cabin of Kylo’s ship. But this time I can see, and when I pull back I’m rewarded with the beginnings of his smile. I smile back and watch long creases spring up on his cheeks, bracketing his mouth in doubled laughter lines. He looks ten years younger. It’s irresistible, and I tackle him, wrapping my arms and legs impulsively round him. He’s so solid!

* * *

He traces a finger over my bared shoulderblades and I tense, expecting the next question.

“What are these lines?”

“Nothing.” I know what they look like: drunken hieroglyphics cut into my skin, roughly smeared with tattoo ink, and badly healed.

“They look like writing. Is this your language?”

“Not exactly.”

“What do the words say?”

I shrug as casually as I can. “You tell me, and we’ll both know.” Looking in a mirror, I’ve never been able to make out much more than _tau_ and _gamma._

There’s a beat of silence, and I realise that Kylo hasn’t used the Force to read my mind since we had our meeting with Snoke. My secrets are safe unless…

Though who am I kidding? I don’t have valuable secrets tattooed on my back. The partially-finished tattoo is part of my past, though, and I need to move on. The only way back is forward.

“I had friends, family back home. We did some crazy things.”

Kylo turns his head away sharply, and something falls into place for me: during our conversations on the way to Snoke’s planet, he made the same gesture every time I brought up family. He’d changed the subject. I don’t know one thing about his background.

Good, I won’t have to share the fact that I spent months on the pirate ship crying myself to sleep imagining the memorial service my family no doubt held for me. I’d spent entire days choosing the music they’d probably played. I wrote long speeches farewelling myself in my head. I’d imagined them sharing the things they missed most about me.

“I miss her sense of humour,” my brother sobbed, in my tearful imaginings.

Eventually I realised that my sense of humour was the only thing from my past worth keeping. Thinking about home was paralysing me. Time to move on with a new life. So one day I locked my memories away, took a long hard look at the sensor screens I was supposed to be monitoring, swallowed my fear, and rewired the alerts so the pirates would never see the gigantic triangular ship bearing down on us until it was too late.

Hello, new space life. And hello, new space boyfriend.

“Talking in Basic seems easy today,” I say, to change the subject. “I am, aren’t I? Talking better?”

Kylo nods, considering. “They say the brain rewires itself while you sleep. The medtechs certainly put you to under for long enough to…” He breaks off. “What happened to you, anyway? I found you unconscious in one of the corridors.”

“Some of your Knights threw me into a sort of well,” I say. “Not Slasheye and Talks-to-Ghosts, but the others.”

Kylo’s lips tighten. “I thought they had something to do with it.” He gives me a rather cruel smile with one side of his mouth. “You saw them in the medbay. I hope you think they’ve been sufficiently punished.”

“My hero,” I murmur, only half in sarcasm. But a sudden thought blooms uncomfortably in my head. Oh, it’s a very good thing Kylo’s lost the urge to read my mind. Maybe he catches something of my thoughts anyway, for his eyes narrow. I lean forward to distract him with a kiss. Or at least, brushing my lips across the soft lines of that sullen mouth, with the promise of a kiss.

“When are we leaving?” I ask.

There’s another long beat of silence while he considers me, eyes hooded. His gaze travelling over my body makes me prickle all over, hot and cold. What have I got to offer but this? Any girl could offer as much.

Ah, but he wants to be a hero, though he doesn’t know it. Twice now he’s saved me.

“You know what I want, Kylo? More space. I haven’t seen anything. It’s all out there. Stars and galaxies. New worlds.”

“Stars and galaxies,” he murmurs, shaking his head. “I’m not your tour guide to the galaxy. But I’ll take you back to the Finalizer tomorrow. The Knights have a briefing with Snoke and then we’re finished here.”

I lean forward and kiss him. “I’m starving. Anything to eat?”

Kylo toggles the comms system and calls for breakfast. It’s brought in a few minutes later by a couple of droids. One of them gives a whirring sigh and sinks to the floor after putting out our plates. Kylo prods it with his foot, turns it over, flips open a panel in its back.

“Huh. It’s run out of power. There must be something wrong with the rechargers.” He smacks the light panel by the bed, and nothing happens. “This old place,” he shakes his head. “The power goes out.” He turns to me with a flare of his characteristic intensity. “But one day, it’ll be all fixed up. It’ll be the centre of the galaxy. The halls of power. I know it seems hard to imagine, but with Snoke…”

Luckily my face is too full of food to betray much expression. “Where from does this place get power?” I ask, once I’ve swallowed.

“Generators in the basement, I suppose.”

I bury my face in a glass of bribb juice and toss it down my throat so fast I nearly choke.

“Slow down,” says Kylo. “Or do you enjoy drowning so much?”

I smile weakly. “I think I’d better stay in bed. When you go, can you ask a droid to bring me the datapads in my room? It might be best if I stay here and read them.” I explain where my room is, and Kylo doesn’t comment on the fact that I’ve invited myself to stay.

Later I lie in the cool dimness with the datapads, filling my mind with theorems and trying not to think of the black lake slowly spreading through the basement of Kylo’s beloved palace.


	27. Rakata

There’s a final briefing with Snoke before they all leave. Snoke looks tired. He slouches on his throne, gesturing languidly with long, scarred fingers to emphasise a point here and there as he speaks. Kylo’s seen this before: visits to Snoke’s stronghold are always short, and by the end of them, he appears noticeably drained. Slasheye has a theory that their master spends most of his life in some sort of hibernation. It might explain his longevity as well as the neglected appearance of this complex, which has no living servants and only minimal infrastructure for guests.

The throne room is dimly lit by shafts of reddish sunlight falling from vents in the high ceiling. The power is still out. Hopefully Snoke’s droid majordomo will get around to fixing the power before Kylo has to return. The food served in the dining hall is starting to taste slightly spoiled.

They discussed what they’ve learned from the new holocron. “Though much knowledge has been lost to time, I am not without my own arts,” says Snoke at last, opening a small box. “These will contain enough for you to continue your studies.” The Knights step forward in turn, murmuring their gratitude as they each take a small copy of the holocron. “Kylo Ren, take the original and see what further secrets you can learn.” Kylo bows and steps forward so Snoke can drop the holocron, with its surprising weight, into his outstretched palm.

The Knights have a mission on Akiva, to search out more Sith artefacts. Hatun Doss is given another, more political task: to strengthen a network of Imperial sympathisers that still survives on Akiva since the planet’s reversion to the New Republic.

“Go, now, and do my bidding,” says Snoke, straightening up and flicking his fingers at the Knights. He points to Kylo. “You, stay. We will do some meditation.”

Kylo kneels down and allows the darkness to flood his mind, intoxicating and powerful. Deep into their shared meditation, it seems as though Snoke is opening doors for him, one after another, revealing vistas that, although dim and indescribable, renew his sense of purpose.

Afterwards he stands and bows again to Snoke. “I feel the dark feeding into my powers, Master,” he says.

“Merely unlocking what is already yours,” says Snoke, almost purring.

“What are your orders for me, Master, if I am not to lead the Knights to Akiva?”

“Return to the Finalizer,” he replies. He catches Kylo’s wince and raises an admonishing finger. “I need you there to represent me. The First Order would use me as a political ally. Your presence reminds them that we hold a power beyond their grasp; a power they must bow to.”

Kylo nods. He raises his lightsaber, ignites it and salutes Snoke, tracing an X of light into the air between them. Snoke smiles, a little tiredly maybe, but pleased. Kylo leaves the throne room, his shoulders squared. His firm footsteps echo off the polished stone walls. _The future is real, and it is ours!_

There’s just a travel bag to collect from his room, and the girl, who’s carrying her precious datapads.

“That’s my shirt you’re wearing,” he comments.

She points at a ragged pile of silky black scraps on the bed. “I asked the serving droid to look for clothes, and all it found was this.”

Kylo stretches it out. It seems like the kind of thing Asajj Ventress might wear. It’s held together with leather straps, almost rotted through. A couple of rusty, crumbling buckles fall out of the fabric. “That’s an antique. Very well. You can keep my shirt for now.”

She takes one of the less-rusted belts out of the ancient dress and puts it around her waist.

“I look like, what-you-say, idiot,” she mutters. Kylo’s shirt leavers her bare-legged, a sight he enjoys with sidelong glances as she trots along beside him to the launchpad, humming happily and bounding up the shuttle’s ramp when he brings it down. Once they’re in the cockpit, she props up her datapads on the console and straps herself into the co-pilot’s chair.

“Hm, ha!” she says, calling up a page of equations on one of the pads. “Show me how the navcomp works. This is it here, right?” She taps the console in front of her.

“If you were really my co-pilot, you’d be operating it.”

“Ooh! Let’s make pretending. What do I do?”

“It takes years to learn,” he grunts. It’s lucky he’s tall, because he can lean over her from the pilot’s seat and punch in the figures himself.

“Hey, hah! Slow down! What did you do? Let me see!” She bats at his hands. He ignores her and settles back in his own seat. She shoots him a quick glare and then starts tapping madly at her datapad, eyes swivelling with lightning speed between the figures on the navcomp and some simulation she’s running. Fat chance, he thinks. But it’s amusing to watch her try.

She gives it up once he’s fired up the engines and they’re lifting off. As Snoke’s stronghold drops away, she’s on the edge of her seat, watching it shrink to a stone hand clenched against the worn ridges of its surroundings. The eroded hills become nothing more than wrinkles. The red-hazed horizon contracts and space tilts down to meet them.

“Do we have to go straight back to the Finalizer?”

“Surely you won’t want to miss any more of your cadet training, would you?”

“You could give me a lesson in galactic astrography to make up for that I being away,” she says. “Everyone knows _something_ about other planets. Except me. I’m so _ignorant!”_

He laughs, but considers it anyway. The fastest course would take them back to the Finalizer in a couple of days, passing via the transfer station so he can pick up his Upsilon-class shuttle. But he’d like time away from the First Order to think about what he’s learned during his visit to Snoke.

“All right.”

Her alert gaze fixes on his hands again as he calls up a new course on the navcomp.

* * *

There’s nothing much to do once they reach hyperspace, but she’s a good travelling companion. She sits quietly beside him in the cockpit with her datapads, while he applies Snoke’s teachings to the new holocron. It turns out that his meditations have a good synergy with the girl’s mathematical work. He spends hours losing himself in the depths of the dark side while she studies. At the edges of his Force awareness, he can sense her trying to understand the universe through the contents of her datapads. Her equations appear to him as vast, airy blocks of light that she’s trying to manoeuvre into teetering structures. They collapse, and she scrolls back a few pages in her datapad, doggedly starting from the beginning. Her concentration forms a relaxing counterpoint to his own, more mystical researches.

There are subtle, delicate strands of the Force weaving through the galaxy, tied to history, tied to the future. Light and dark. They pull Kylo in different directions, promising revelations, understanding.

The workings of the Force in the galaxy is one of the most beautiful things a sentient being can experience, according to Snoke. _Most are content to observe its workings. But some few are privileged to understand how to change it. There are strands of Force that affect everything, if you have the knowledge to recognise them and the power to act on them._

Kylo keeps those words in his consciousness like a mantra as he meditates. But his contemplation of the Force is disturbed. There is one nexus of Force he would recognise, no matter how far away it were in the physical universe: a knot of willpower, intention, light, and passion he wants to avoid above all others. His mother. Her Force powers, although latent, are tied to so many other strands, so many people, so many memories. In his meditations, he keeps his gaze away from its light.

The proximity alert chimes, and Kylo snaps out of his trance.

“Here we are. The Rakata System,” says Kylo. He’s set the navcomp so they’ll swoop out of hyperspace close to Lehon. The girl gasps as the brilliant blue-green world appears on their screen. A huge aquamarine moon rises to fill half the sky on their port side. Kylo takes the controls and skips them down towards the surface, close enough to see the islands dotting its oceans.

“Tell me about this place,” the girl asks.

“It is steeped in legend. Great battles happened here.”

“Space battles?”

“Yes. You’ll see the wreckage of a thousand battleships when we leave. They make an asteroid belt around the planet. But more than that, this is the location of the mythical Star Forge. It used the power of the Force to manufacture huge battle engines.”

He tells her about the Infinite Empire and Darth Revan and Darth Malak as they soar past some of the equatorial islands, where the stone lacework of ancient alien cities catches the light of the sun. She hangs on his every word.

“How long ago was all this?”

“Thirty thousand years or so.”

The girl slaps the arm of her chair. “Get out! Really? Your histories are that long?”

“Darth Revan’s story is more recent. Three thousand years ago.”

Their ship is gliding close to the surface now. Suddenly the girl shoots half out of her seat. “I saw something move down there. An animal? How big is that thing?”

“Giant rancor,” says Kylo briefly, glancing down. It’s there all right, turning to track their passage through the air above. “That’s one reason we’re not landing.” He pulls back on the joystick, and then they’re heading out of the atmosphere to skim under the ring of asteroids and wreckage that surrounds the planet. Even away from the rings, space is filled with random junk. It calls for some tricky piloting, and Kylo throws himself into the challenge, dodging and jinking through the obstacles. When he looks over the at the girl in the co-pilot’s seat, the look on her face makes him grin. She’s almost fissioning with excitement. He laughs and slams the ship into hyperspace just before they hit the first ring of debris that sparkles against the blackness of space in front of them.

A hyperspace jump - more of a hiccup really - takes them to the system’s outermost world, where his Knights recently found the new holocron. Kylo comes close enough to see glimpses of spiky low-gravity architecture carved into the ice. Strange and beautiful.

“Who lives there?”

“Nobody. Abandoned long ago,” Kylo tells her. He’s not ready to leave the system yet, though. There’s such a density of Force energy here that he wonders whether the Knights missed anything. “I need to meditate,” he says, and puts their ship into orbit around the little ice planet. _Let’s see if the Force here has anything to tell me._

It does. Space here is filled with greedy presences. Long dead voices mutter to him of their victories and the glory that was theirs. “We await you, child of greatness,” they say. “Come, seize the power, youngling.” They can’t quite disguise the predatory interest behind their flattery. “Come closer.”

It’s too intense. Kylo shakes himself out of meditation and goes to find the girl. She’s long since gotten bored and gone to sleep. He jumps onto the bunk to straddle her. She snaps awake, sizes up his mood and pulls him down into a kiss. There’s something about the close, intimate darkness of the cabin that makes sex electric. _Those hungry Force ghosts will never have this,_ he thinks. He thrusts into her all the urgency of life, and she bucks against him just as hard.

_What ghosts do you have to drive out?_ he wonders.

When he goes to sleep he dreams he’s shifting blocks of black stone. They are heavy, and make a harsh grating sound as he tries to stack them. He’s had variations of this dream since childhood: somewhere on a darkling plain, he has to build a fortress, a safe place. Tall statues watch him with approving eyes: Exar Kun, or Darth Revan. It’s a very appropriate dream for this place, he thinks, half waking as the girl stirs against him.

“You okay?” she asks sleepily in her language. Half asleep, with his guard down, he reads her mind and understands her anyway. He nods, and kisses her earlobe gently. He can sleep safer, knowing she will wake him from nightmares. Her dreams are the reverse of his, he realises with a smile: she builds the universe out of weightless blocks of light.

He falls back into the dream. Sometimes in this dream, Darth Vader walks with him, advising him on the best way to build. They will create a dark city together, and all the people of the galaxy will flock to it, drawn to the order and safety they promise. A beautiful city, well-defended, lit by starlight, shining across the empty plain.

Sometimes when the dream goes bad, it’s because he knows something is nibbling at the foundations of all that he builds. He’s filled with anxiety, searching the courts and towers of his city for weaknesses. Cracks open up and golden light spills out.

He always hates having to confess this to Snoke.

“The symbolism’s so obvious! I’m not _stupid!_ But what can I do?” he rages to Snoke, over and over. “It’s always the same battle. Help me!”

Snoke usually reminds him that what makes dark siders more powerful is their whole-heartedness. “Thus the Light will try to divide you, to make you doubt,” he says. “So you are correct. This is your battle: to defeat the light’s ability to confuse you.”

Tonight, though, lying with the girl in his arms, he falls into the worst version of his nightmare. “The city is built!” Kylo proclaims, standing on a dais while Snoke and the ghosts of past Sith lords stand at his shoulders to applaud him. But the square before him is empty. “Who will come to live in it?” he asks, his heart sinking. He knows what will happen next: The dream will splinter into scenes of appalling bloodshed as the citizens of the galaxy refuse to accept the city built for them. Or sometimes the dream skips, and the square is suddenly filled with cheering citizens, a thousand species roaring and shouting their loyalty.

“They seem happy enough. Let’s make them dance now, shall we?” asks Exar Kun, smiling. Sheets of flame spread across the streets and courts of the city, and all the people dance indeed, trying to get away from the heat. But it’s useless: the towering black walls of the city offer no hope of escape, and in the end they all burn like torches, screaming.

Snoke’s always said this dream is a lie sent to him by the light. Knowing that has never helped much.

“Hey hey! Wake up! You’re safe, nothing bad is happening,” says the girl, waking him before the awful finale. She places a firm hand on his heart as though she can will it to slow down from its desperate pounding. “Whatever you dreamed, it’s not true.”

“Let’s get out of here,” he says. She follows him to the cockpit, yawning, but still watching carefully what he does.

“Where next?”

“Jakku,” he says.


	28. Jakku

Jakku’s not that far from Rakata, and his new holocron has made enough mentions of its early history to pique his interest.

The ship kicks into hyperspace and they go back to bed. By the time they wake, the ship is ready to drop into space again. They eat a breakfast of ship’s rations and wait for the chime. It comes, and the lines of light in their viewscreen vanish. The golden planet of Jakku hangs before them.

“Why are we here?”

“More history. There was a great space battle here too. Much more recent. The end of the Galactic Empire.” He’s often imagined what it would be like to pilot a starfighter among those big behemoths.

“When?”

“About 25 years,” he says.

“About the time you were born.”

He ignores her curiosity, and sets the ship to orbit the planet, low and lazy. Sand dunes make hypnotic patterns across much of the surface. There is a slight feathering of clouds at the poles.

“See those?” Kylo points down “Shipwrecks. Star destroyers. Some of them as big as the Finalizer.”

“Shall we go down and look?”

“I’m looking for something else. Something you’ll like. There’s meant to be some kind of ancient science station here. An observatory.”

“What an empty place. Oh! I can see some buildings. Would people down there know where it is?”

“It’s a Sith thing. I should be able to find it in the Force.”

“Why not just ask somebody?”

“Quiet. I need to meditate.”

The whole planet has a confusing Force signature, an insubstantial shimmer, hard to penetrate. After a couple of frustrating hours, all he knows is that something, _perhaps,_ is being hidden. But what or where, he can’t tell. They’re forced to land.

“So, we’re going to land and ask someone?” says the girl, grinning with excitement.

Kylo sighs and pulls on his helmet. It looks as hot as the seventh Corellian hell out there.

He’s chosen Niima Outpost, a scattered, shoddy-looking place in the middle of the dunes, surrounded by the great starship wrecks. Their ship is the only vehicle on the landing pad apart from a couple of old hulks. One or two have their engines exposed, evidently in some stage of repairs. The rest are just lumpy forms under protective tarpaulins.

“They must have bad dust storms around here,” the girl comments.

 

Niima Outpost is almost deserted, which is lucky because every time the girl sees anything move, she clutches his arm and hisses, “What’s that?”

“A luggabeast.”

“Is it alive?”

“Cybernetic. Mostly.”

The luggabeast swings its armoured head towards her voice, and she jumps behind Kylo.

“What’s _that?”_

“A Dybrinthe. I think he breathes from that tank.”

The centre of the village is a junk trader’s stall, where a fat crolute scowls at them from behind a fortified counter. He looks hot and sweaty.

“You’re a long way from the ocean,” says Kylo.

“Shut up,” says the crolute.

Kylo ignites his lightsaber and cuts the metal grille separating them to pieces. The look of terror on the crolute’s face is satisfying. Maybe Kylo’s not good at negotiating, but at least now the junk dealer’s listening. “I’m looking for something ancient. A place that was built long ago. A place of mysteries.”

“I don’t know anything about that,” says the crolute sullenly. Kylo pushes into his mind with the Force. It’s a junkpile in there, but the crolute is telling the truth.

Kylo slams his fist on the counter with frustration. “Who _does_ know anything about this place?” The crolute shrugs, and Kylo uses the Force to shove him against the back wall. Beside him, the girl gives a little hiss of alarm. Kylo ignores her. “You can’t be the only one here,” he asks, leaning further over the counter. “Where is everyone?”

“Out scavenging, if they know what’s good for them. They’ll come back before nightfall.”

“Well I’m not waiting here,” Kylo mutters, and leads the girl to through the rickety tent structure to an open-walled bar. There’s a Kyuzu playing dejarik with a Melitto. The girl tip-toes over for a closer look, but as soon as they catch sight of Kylo they break off the game and stare at him warily, the Melitto’s sensory cilia quivering with alarm.

Kylo repeats his question. After a long silence, the Kyuzu says, “You mean the Observatory?”

“It’s been called that.”

“If it’s some sort of a Force thing, then you should go to Tuanul Village. They know all about those legends,” the Kyuzu says.

Kylo nods and turns to go.

“Can you buy me a drink?” whispers the girl at his elbow. “I want to say I have drink in an alien space bar _with actual aliens._ ”

But Kylo can’t drink with her, not without taking his mask off, and he’s not about to do that. “It’ll be rot-gut,” he says, and drags her back to the ship where he has the blissful relief of taking off his helmet and scratching every last itch out of his sweaty scalp.

The girl hands him a glass of water from the galley. “Wear a sun hat next time. It’ll be more comfortful.”

Tuanul Village is the opposite of Niima Outpost: nobody appears to be doing any work at all, unless you count the manufacture of hinky Force talismans as work. The place is rife with every ancient Force symbol he’s ever heard of, hanging from the eaves and tentpoles, scratched into the walls, and woven into little flags that snap and flicker irritatingly in the dusty wind.

“These people must belong to the Church of the Force,” he tells the girl.

“Is it a religion?”

“It’s an embarrassment. They’re not even Force sensitive.”

“Ah. _Fans_ ,” she says, in her language.

But they are, at least, respectful. When he asks about the Observatory, the old woman who seems to be the village headwoman says, “Ah, you are a seeker? We also seek to understand this manner of thing.”

“So where is it?”

“We have not yet found it. Here, have some Reythan berry juice. It balances one’s Forces.”

“Why would I want to do that?” snarls Kylo. He’s hot, these people are stupid, and the Observatory’s refusal to be found is annoying.

“I sense that you are agitated. Perhaps the dark side is looking for a home in you. Here, have some juice.”

“You don’t sense anything. You haven’t got a shred of Force about you.”

“She probably reads your body talk. Body language, I mean,” says the girl. “It’s not difficult.”

The headwoman’s still holding out the glass of juice. Kylo snatches it and throws it on the ground. “Just in case I am being unclear,” he says over his shoulder to the girl.

A man standing nearby lets out an earsplitting scream, pointing at the liquid spilled on the sand. “Look at the shape it makes! I see a rathtar! It’s an omen! An omen, I tell you!”

“Where’s Lor San Tekka?” the headwoman asks, giving Kylo a far less friendly look.

Despite the desert heat, that name sends a dash of ice water down Kylo’s spine. _That sanctimonious busybody? Here?_ Their paths have crossed and nearly crossed so many times that Kylo suspects it’s more than coincidence. The Force at work. Though why the Force thinks Kylo - or Ben Solo, back then - would benefit from Lor San Tekka’s lectures, only the Maker knows. Lor San Tekka’s attempts to make teenage Ben feel guilty certainly didn’t end well.

“Lor won’t be back from the badlands until tomorrow,” somebody shouts through the doorway. Well, that’s a mercy. Kylo takes his hand off the hilt of his lightsaber, where it has come to rest of its own accord.

“Quick, get Melie. She’ll do the balancing chant,” says the headwoman, giving Kylo the side-eye. A young woman runs in a moment later and starts wailing and dancing around the spilled drink. The hut is suddenly far too full of people.

“Dear Maker, let’s get out of here,” says Kylo, and stomps back to the ship, the girl jogging along in his wake.

“Why? It’s just getting interesting!” she says breathlessly.

He catches the lie in her voice: she’s trying to play it cool, but the one thing his Force senses can pick up clearly is her alarm. “What’s upset you?” he asks shortly.

“I’m not used to that much, ah, violence. All we needed to do is ask...”

“You think being nice to them will get us anything? Don’t be naive.”

“Umm.”

Still rattled by their visit to the village and its unwelcome associations - _Lor San Tekka!_ \- Kylo snaps. “Do you know what my title is on the Finalizer? _Chief Inquisitor!”_

The girl does not answer, apparently crushed by his words. Kylo doesn’t enjoy the sensation of victory as much as usual. _Even though I’m right and she’s wrong..._

Dinner on board the ship is a silent affair, and he catches her glancing at him nervously. Afterwards she curls up to sleep on the other bunk, away from him. For a moment he feels heat rising to his face. She’s the last person he’d expect to make him feel so ashamed of himself. _How dare she judge me!_

But they have a long journey back together, and a fight now would be unpleasant, so he sits quietly next to her.

“I would use my lightsaber in your defence too, you know.”

“Yes but….never mind.” Her face is sad, and it’s too easy to catch her thought. _You'd be quick to use it against me, too._

Seems like it’s his turn to stroke the tension out of her, instead of the other way round. He not sure he knows how, but he finds ways to touch her gently and show her as much tenderness as he can imagine, and slowly she relaxes enough to manage a tremulous smile. _Maybe I’m not pretending. Maybe I’m growing up._

He kisses her softly on the mouth.

They go to sleep orbiting Jakku, and this time Kylo has a very different dream. He’s in the desert, just before dawn. Each dune is tipped with light. Somebody is walking towards him: a girl, tall and slender. He can’t see her clearly in the half-light. All he can make out is that she carries a staff, and she walks with easy confidence across the sand. He knows she’s important, but who is she?

Soon he will be able to see her face. He waits, breath bated. The sun rises and she is a silhouette in the blazing light, and then she’s gone. He wakes in the cabin of his ship, puzzled yet filled with a sense of peace. It’s so foreign to him. Is this what hope feels like, this warmth, this lightness around his heart? He hardly knows any more.

He sits up and slides out of the little bunk bed, careful not to disturb the girl beside him.

He pauses by the door, and the light from the corridor shines on the girl’s face. She has pretty ears, with little tendrils of hair behind them that he likes to coil around his fingers. She’s cute. Sex with her is good. It’s different to the succession of one night stands he’s allowed himself until now. With her, he’s a man, not just a boy with strange powers playing adult games. But it’s more than the sex, more than the way her attention strokes his ego. It’s the sideways slant of everything she says, the way it surprises him and makes him laugh. She makes him think. Being with her loosens the hard knots in his chest that he has forgotten were there.

But can he imagine her taking his side one day among the rulers of the galaxy? If his dreams of the dark city are true - and he believes they symbolise his future - then the girl in his dream just now belongs there too. He needs somebody strong enough to keep pace with him no matter how strange and perilous his destiny may be.

_Imagine a girl with the power to match mine! Tall and slender, like the girl in my dream. She looked like a fighter. What a pair we would make. Why haven’t I thought of this before? I can’t be the only one._

Going to the cockpit, he watches Jakku roll past beneath him, golden and mysterious. Still that flicker of Force everywhere around him, but no clue to its source. A mystery for another day, perhaps. He’ll come back once he’s studied this place’s history some more.

“Well, enough sightseeing. We have the long haul back to my shuttle,” Kylo says, when the girl wakes up and joins him in the cockpit. “Back to the First Order transfer station.”

She nods, sipping a hot breakfast drink. “Well, let me do the navcomp. Show me how.” She moves to hover over it.

Kylo laughs and switches the navcomp over to the quickstart screen, then scrolls to “recents”. The console shows a list and he taps on the line on the menu that says, “transfer station 2Codia North”.

The girl squawks. “You mean there’s an easier way?”

“If the ship has been there recently, yes. You don’t have to calculate the destination the hard way all the time. The navcomp remembers this location. Though the pilot still has to set the course through hyperspace.”

“But the location…the ship stores its recent trips in this file?”

“Recents, yes.”

“How recent is recent?” There’s a note of tension in her voice.

“A couple of Standard years or so.”

He’s been careful to avoid any Force link with her, but he can’t help picking up her flash of excitement. He glances at her. She’s trying to keep her face blank, but their old mental connection has not quite died. Now it gives her away: Something has shaken her to her core.

He knows, in that moment, that he will lose her. And so, once they’ve made the jump into hyperspace, he picks her up and carries her back to his cabin.


	29. What Are We Fighting For?

Of course, once we get back to the Finalizer, it’s obvious it’ll never work out with me and Kylo.

The First Order just brings out the worst in us. Kylo’s always on edge, full of complaints about people who try his patience. That tries _my_ patience. Unlike me, he could go live somewhere else if he wanted. Who'll argue with his Force powers, if he wants to leave?

"You don't understand!" he hisses, when I suggest it.

"So _tell_ me! Why are you here?"

But he never does. He just glares down the length of his nose at me. Every day his eyes grow more shadowed, until he looks like he's wearing mascara. The prince of tragedy.

Meanwhile the Finalizer’s cadet programme is feeding my workaholic tendencies something chronic. Our squad is in charge of bringing the captured pirate ship - _my ship -_ up to First Order specifications. It’s useful for them, and good training for us. The project has me completely sucked in: I’m always gagging to learn more about how things work.

If I’m not working on the ship we’re rehabilitating, then I’m sneaking time alone to study the datapads Talks-to-Ghosts gave me. Time, light, gravity. I’d once made a hobby of studying them, I thought I understood them at least a little bit, but everything I learn here stands my knowledge on its head.

All this means that Kylo and I barely see each other except at night, when we’re too tired for the slow, rambling conversations we had during our space voyages together. Without time to chip away at his shell and learn more about him, and with both of us frazzled and distracted by our days, we end up doing very little besides having sex.

If I didn’t already have enough reasons to fall out of love with the First Order, the way cadets are treated as a source of sex on tap would be another one. It’s supposed to be a sweet gig, being the girlfriend of somebody in the top ranks. That’s what everyone in my barracks says. But I see my classmates arriving late to the breakfast mess, baggy eyed and mussy-haired, and I don’t see much romance in it, personally. We have enough work to do without being booty call as well.

But then the pager on my wristband goes, and I’ll know I have a date with Kylo later. Sleep is for the weak.

Cadets keep their mouths shut about their affairs. There’s a bit of good-natured teasing and laughter, but too much curiosity is considered bad manners. After all, who knows when a person might need their own secret liaisons covered up?

A sweet gig? I only wish I had the time. Sometimes I wish Talks-to-Ghosts had never given me those datapads, because now it feels I’m trying to force my way into three different futures at once, and they’re all hard work. In one, I’m Kylo’s girlfriend and we adventure through the galaxy together, seeing countless wonders. In another, I find my way home, save my ex-husband and give my people the keys to space travel. In the third, I’m a star cadet, I graduate, I’m promoted, and I live out my life as a successful member of the First Order. I hate the third option, but that doesn’t stop me from working as hard as I can, even when a cynical voice in my head mocks everything our teachers tell us. I hate to fail at anything. It used to drive my family crazy, and apparently travel hasn’t changed me all that much.

I want to ace my cadet school training, break the secrets of hyperdrive held in my datapads, and make Kylo love me. There’s no way I can succeed. Nobody has that many hours in their day.

Spending nights with Kylo in his room, there are times when I make him smile, or surprise a great crack of laughter out of him. Then, for a moment, I almost believe in my space adventure romance fantasies. Those moments when I’m sliding my palm across the slabs of his shoulderblades - I’ve eaten full meals off tables smaller than his back - and I want nothing else. Laughter is rare on the Finalizer, and so is love, or even mere kindness. The cadets have kindness, but I see the First Order’s systems whittling away at it day by day.

I recognise Kylo’s sardonic humour very well: it’s the laughter of someone coping as best he can. My attempts to fit into the First Order make him laugh more than anything. He’s such a misfit himself.

But I don’t know what he does all day. It’s like I’m living in Bluebeard’s Castle. The wrong question earns me a fierce glare, and silence.

“What’s this?,” I ask, fingering the sleeve of his black armour shirt as I help him take it off. “It looks like blood.”

He snaps, in the sudden way he has, and flings the shirt to the floor in front of me. “Take it to be cleaned, then, if you don’t like it.”

It’s the way he says it, haughty and furious, pointing at the shirt as though as though I were his servant. “Go on. Take it away!” he shouts. “Or are you too good for that?”

“Who do you think I am?” I say.

“Who do you think _I_ am?” he retorts.

“You’re not the boss of me. I know that.”

Time, light, gravity. I thought I knew these things. Time stretches beyond reason as we stare at each other, and the darkness in him sucks all the light out of the room. His bitterness has its own terrible gravity, a black hole. I don’t want to fall in.

“You’re going to die alone some day,” I mutter.

“You’re going to die right now, if you don’t get out of here!” he shouts.

“And then will you be happier?” I say in a low voice, and regret it immediately. I have known broken men with violent emotions before, but I have made a mistake about Kylo. He’s fractured along different lines from my ex.

There were many times I was afraid for my ex. There was never a time I was afraid _of_ him.

I can see how close Kylo is to doing that thing with his hand. The invisible choke hold. I suck in air and get ready to hold my breath. After another stretched moment of silence, he exhales in a long snarl and points towards the door with a savage gesture. I don’t need a second invitation.


	30. The Destiny Girl

Kylo’s pulling on a pair of combat boots, having given up all hope of rest after his stupid argument with that stupid girl. Maybe a session with his lightsaber in the training room will tire him out enough to sleep. The chime of his room’s communicator comes as a relief, even at this late hour. He checks it, and is unsurprised to see a message from Snoke. Snoke’s days do not align with the Finalizer’s clocks.

 _Come to the holochamber now,_ it says.

Well, good. Kylo finishes dressing and makes his way through the quiet halls, into the cool, dark space of the holochamber. Snoke’s image snaps into existence a moment after he arrives.

“Are you working on the secrets of the holocron?” he asks Kylo, without any greeting.

“Yes Master. It is not what we initially thought. The deeper levels I have accessed are not about combat skills.”

“What are they about, then?”

“With understanding how the Force connects with objects and people, both in the present and in other times.”

Snoke’s image flickers and freezes for a moment. Kylo holds his breath, waiting for Snoke’s response. The image steadies and he can hear the approval in Snoke’s voice. “You might be able to gain the abilities your friend Talks-to-Ghosts has naturally, but with a measure of control that he, sadly, lacks entirely. That would be a valuable thing,” says Snoke, nodding to himself. “Once again I see why I was right to pick you as my disciple.”

Snoke’s eyes, even as a hologram, seem to penetrate Kylo, projecting that warm glow of approval he can’t remember ever feeling from anybody else. Certainly not from his parents, whose approval always came loaded with concern and judgement. Snoke is blessedly free of the _fussing_ that used to drive Ben Solo crazy.

The hologram cuts out with a hiss. Kylo waits tensely through another pause before it stutters back into existence. This time Snoke seems aware of it - Kylo can see him tapping the controls on the arm of his throne, looking irritated.

“There have been a lot of failures around here recently,” he mutters.

“There is another thing, Master,” Kylo says. Snoke gestures for Kylo to continue, so he does. “I had a dream about a girl.” He catches Snoke’s look, which is skeptical. “A strong dream, about a strong girl,” he clarifies.

“Tell me about it.”

“There is little to tell. She was walking through a desert towards me, carrying a weapon. Nothing happened, and yet…I had that feeling I get from Force dreams. Usually they are bad, Master, but this one…This one was good. I sense that she will be important.”

Snoke leans forward eagerly. “A tall girl, in a desert, carrying a staff?”

“Yes, it was some kind of a staff. Not a lightsaber.”

“This is the one I have seen in my visions,” says Snoke, his scarred face creasing into a smile. “She will be _wondrous_. And she will be your destiny. With her by your side, the galaxy will bow to your commands.”

Snoke’s hologram dissolves into hissing static. Kylo hits his fist against his thigh with a groan of frustration. _The girl! His destiny!_ Snoke’s words make it seem so real, so close. So _desirable._

The hologram reappears and Kylo bows to the image of Snoke’s throne, his mouth dry. “What must I do, Master? Where is she?”

“We don’t know. We wait. We observe,” says Snoke, watching Kylo brightly. “I do know another thing from my own visions. There is one thing standing in the way, between you and the girl we seek. One opponent you must destroy.”

Kylo stares at Snoke. “Tell me,” he whispers at last, although he knows the answer already.

“Your family. Unless and until you destroy them, they will claim her. Your _father,_ specifically, will try to keep her for himself.”

Their gazes are locked for an interminable moment, Snoke’s will pressing on Kylo’s. “Your father, Kylo,” he prompts, his voice dripping with hatred and spite. “Your father, and the girl who holds the fate of the galaxy in her hands. Will you allow that?”

Kylo jerks his head away in a spasm of disgust. “No Master.”

“Good. Do not fail me. If he were to —!”

With a sharp burst of light, the hologram blinks out entirely. Kylo waits, pacing nervously, but after ten minutes it’s clear the transmission is over.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * * *
> 
> The end of this story is near. Although I know what happens (not always a given, when I'm writing), I have to be sure of telling it the right way. So I will only post two chapters today, to give myself more time to work on it. Thanks for reading, people. I love sharing this with you.


	31. We Are the Servants of Order

_We are the servants of order!_   
_We are the enemies of disorder!_   
_Who are we?_   
_We are the First Order!_

There’s a hundred of us cadets assembled in one of the Finalizer’s big training halls for our daily dose of First Order culture. I’m more awake than usual, since I no longer spend my nights grappling in sweaty sheets with Kylo. But I’m still not in the mood for this much shouting first thing in the morning, and I fake my way through half an hour of calisthenics. The sharp chemical smell of the soap we use fills the air as we warm up.

“Very good,” says Lieutenant Sala at the end of it. “Now, this is Culture Hour. Unlike most recruits, many of you have not been trained to First Order ways from birth. However I believe we can turn this into a strength, not a weakness.” She gives us one of her tight little smiles. “That is why _I_ am training you, instead of Lieutenant Dashemon.”

We recognise that we are permitted to groan, and obediently do so. Lieutenant Dashemon is a walking pile of bigotry with a filthy temper.

“Does anybody have something to share from their home culture?” Sala asks.

A red-headed cadet called Nareen Perpo raises a hand. “I have a song,” she offers, with just the right blend of deference and confidence our superiors like to see.

“Very well then,” Sala says.

Perpo walks out the front, pulling out some kind of kazoo-shaped thing from her sleeve. It doesn’t need to be blown: she switches it on and fingers it, and it pipes a series of reedy chords. I’m already not a fan.

_Where there is chaos_   
_Where there is fear,_   
_We will bring order,_   
_Our mission is clear._

_Death does not deter us_   
_For Truth we hold dear_   
_We’ll fight for the future_   
_Our mission is clear_

There are many more verses like this, and Perpo delivers them in a sweetly piercing voice, her face shining with loyalty. I know Perpo’s gunning for a cadet troop leader role. If quantity of patriotic verse is what’s required, then she’s a shoo-in for that position.

I yawn. Surely I can’t be the only one. But I’m the one Sala catches.

“Ah, Cadet 9120, so nice to see you among us again after your adventures,” says Sala, suddenly appearing beside me. “Have you got some cultural sharing for us?”

“I have a war chant. But it only works if everyone learns it.” I have hopes of making my whole troop bug their eyes and stick their tongues out at authority.

“No, you demonstrate first,” says Sala sweetly.

“At least have everyone stamp their feet. Like this. Legs flexed, so everyone can see how big your thigh muscles are.” I get them all stamping in time until the hall shakes. The men especially look pleased by the thunderous noise they create.

“Ka ri-te!” I yell. “Stand fast!”

The war dance proves irresistible, and Lieutenant Sala allows the class to try following me through the movements. It’s a lot more exciting than calisthenics, and I can see Sala thinking we might adopt this as a regular workout. Especially since, as I point out, it’s totally all about team spirit.

I’m demonstrating the tongue action, explaining how it signals to my enemies that I plan to eat their brains once I’ve defeated them, when Hux walks in. Between me doing the war-demon face and him doing the what-the-fuck face, I’m not sure whose eyes are bugging out the most.

Meanwhile the cadets who’re trying to learn are still straggling through the disembowel-you-with-a-sharp-stick movement; they manage to turn it into the most enthusiastic salute Hux has ever seen. All credit to their fast reflexes.

Lieutenant Sala must have nerves of steel. She coughs politely into the icy silence and waves me to the back of the ranks while smiling at Hux. “So glad you made it in time for Culture Hour, General,” she says brightly as I slink towards the back row. “We’re often surprised by what our cadets have to share.”

There’s not a lot anyone can say to that. Hux decides to plough on and pretend I didn’t just stick my tongue out at him. Though I can see Phasma and a bunch of assorted flunkies beside him scanning the back ranks, probably trying to memorise my face in case of future encounters. Then Phasma moves, and I realise Kylo is standing behind her. I feel myself go bright red. We haven’t talked in over a week and I can’t guess what he must think of my display. He’s masked, a faceless black pillar.

By the time I recover my wits, Hux is saying, “You’ve been highly diligent in your work on the ship we acquired from the Kibnon-allied pirate cell we broke up. It’s proved a good training tool for you, and the end result is a very useful ship for the First Order. I’ll let First Engineering Officer D’Medet speak to that.”

D’Medet’s been guiding us through the rehabilitation. His specialist teams have found what I could have told them: that my old ship is capable of very long jumps indeed. There’s been quite a lot of excitement over those modifications, and I’ve kept my ears trained on the engineering corps’ conversations about them. Not that I can make much sense of it, with my beginner’s knowledge of hyperdrive mechanics. Even with the help of my precious datapads, I can’t understand the functions they’re discussing.

D’Medet finishes his round-up of what we’ve achieved, and Hux thanks us all. “This marks the end of this phase of your training, and the end of the ship’s stay in dry dock. Our pilots will be taking it out on test runs starting tomorrow, and you will no doubt follow its progress with pride. As a reward for your hard work, we would like to give you all the opportunity to choose a name for our newest ship.”

Everyone claps, including me. As soon as Hux’s party leaves, there’s a babble of voices, as my classmates suggest names, some humorous, some tooth-rottingly patriotic. Lieutenant Sala’s laying down the rules for nominating and voting. Everyone’s talking at once. But I can hardly hear them over the buzz of my own thoughts.

And then my wristband buzzes. Kylo wants to see me in his room after the dinner hour.


	32. One Last Night

I press the buzzer on Kylo’s door, not knowing what to expect. Not an apology. He doesn’t do apologies.

The door swishes open. Kylo’s standing on the other side, looking down at me with his mouth quirked in that half-up, half-down expression that could go either way, into a sneer or a smile.

“That was an interesting demonstration this morning,” he says. “Are you Lieutenant Sala’s star cadet yet?”

“Not quite. You should have seen Hux’s face, though.”

Kylo’s ambiguous mouth tilts towards a smile. “I couldn’t see. I was behind him.”

I mimic Hux’s ramrod-straight pose and bug-eyed expression, and it’s enough to push Kylo all the way into a chuckle.

“I know that face,” he says. With that, he puts a hand on my shoulder - it covers the whole of my shoulder - and steers me over to the table, where there are some plates of food. I sit down and serve myself some vat-grown meat and hydroponic vegetables. They’ve been boiled, without seasonings. Kylo sits opposite me and chews his way mechanically through a couple of heaped servings while I pick away at the unappetising stuff.

“The food was better on Snoke’s planet,” I say.

“Was it?” Kylo doesn’t look up from his plate.

“Do you actually like food?”

“I get hungry.”

I suppose he would. Feeding that enormous frame would take a lot of calories. I run through a brief fantasy future where I take him home and feed him avocados. Pad Thai. Chocolate cake. Banana smoothies. Roast lamb with gravy and baked new potatoes.

But no, the last thing my planet needs is a Force user with a bad temper. It couldn’t possibly end well.

“So, I thought your society was a bit more sophisticated than…whatever you were doing this morning. That war chant,” Kylo says.

I shrug. It’s hard to explain. Layers and layers of culture, people borrowing or stealing or celebrating or rejecting bits and pieces here and there. The First Order seems so monolithic by comparison. Though that has its advantages: Nobody’s looked at my skin colour and assumed I’m the cleaner.

“Some of my ancestors mocked some of my other ancestors for that dance. For their quaint native customs,” I say. “Then we all went to war against a common enemy, and the funny savages didn’t look so funny. A thousand voices roaring in the still air of a desert night, a thousand feet stamping, and then a charge against an enemy that thought the demons of their darkest fairytales had come to life.”

“I thought you were a scientist.” He’s mocking me, but gently.

“I was going to be. But half my family think that’s all wank, and I should do something useful with my life.”

He picks up my meaning, despite the unfamiliar word. “And the other half of your family?”

“They complain if I’m not getting straight As. You know. Perfect test scores.”

This is the first time Kylo’s come anywhere near discussing families. Maybe now would be a good time to ask about his. He’s looking at me, a fond look, I think. Then the moment passes.

“You’re a strange one. Come on, pateesa, let’s go to bed.”

“Pateesa?”

He smiles. “It means…you know. A term of endearment.” He comes over and puts an arm around me, kisses my hair, but can’t bring himself to say whatever it means. Of course not. He wouldn't have gone to all the trouble of having that mask made, of actually wearing it, if he’d wanted people to know his feelings.

If my body has betrayed my ex husband, my tongue never has. I have never called Kylo anything I used to call him. _Hun, sweetie, darling._ The small change of love.

I turn to kiss Kylo’s collarbone, just over the neck of the loose black shirt he’s wearing. This will be the last time. I may as well make it good. One by one, kissing and nibbling his skin as I go, I undo Kylo’s buttons until, with a soft gasp of ticklish laughter, he picks me up and carries me to his bedroom.

“Why, what, you’re always touching my muscles,” he laughs, as we fall into bed together.

“I haven’t been to bed with anyone that has actual muscles before,” I say, laying my palm over his abs and counting them one by one, where his skin is so firm and smooth. “I will enjoy.”

For some reason that seems to make him happy. Well, it makes me happy too.

Afterwards though, he runs his fingers over my shoulders, tracing the jagged lines in my skin again. “You still haven’t told me what this is.”

“I’d rather not talk about it.” Not only is my ex husband none of Kylo’s business, I’m afraid to go anywhere near that subject in case Kylo catches sight of what I’m planning.

“You can’t lie to me, you know.”

 _Did he just catch that last thought?_ I can feel my heartbeat accelerating. I’m not convinced our mental link is completely dead, after all. Sometimes when I’m with Kylo, I suddenly find myself speaking Basic more fluently. Like tonight. I can never be sure how much knowledge really passes between us.

“Snoke forbade you to get inside my head,” I say quickly. It’s a guess, but suddenly a few things fall into place for me. Kylo, masked and cloaked, is meant to be an enigma. He's certainly not supposed to let anyone into his mind. “That’s why you were so upset, after we saw Snoke. He told you off for letting me in your head.”

Kylo’s look darkens into a frown. “Yes,” he admits.

“You thought our mind link was something I was doing. But it was you all along.”

“Yes,” he mutters. “Snoke says I opened a door, that’s all.”

“Doors open both ways,” I say warningly. “I told you that right at the beginning.” If he wants to look into my mind, I’ll see into him again. And that’s forbidden. Good, because right now I need him to stay out.

His hand drops to my back, traces those lines again. “Tell me as a friend, then.”

 _Are we friends?_ His eyes are aglow with some emotion I’ve never seen there before. _Friends, really?_ There’s an appeal in his eyes. Has he got any friends? What a revelation, that we could make friends just by talking! No magic powers required. 

His eyes wide, his face relaxed, listening. Curious. For a while I just admire the movement of his long lashes as his gaze travels across my face, reading my expression the way a normal person would, without trying to use his magic to wrestle secrets from my mind.

“Those marks on my back? It was meant to be way to explain the universe,” I say eventually.

“Who did this?” he asks.

“It’s hard to explain,” I say. I don’t want to explain, but he’s my only friend in two years, and he’s asking. “My husband,” I say at last.

He jerks away from me and his eyebrows draw together in a frown. “What? You never told me you were married! You had a husband?”

“Lots of people have husbands," I say hastily. "You’re not letting me tell the point of the story. We didn’t find out if there is a god, and _that’s_ important.”

“No, it’s not,” mumbled Kylo, sounding hurt. “Plenty of people have gods. But you” — Kylo points at me angrily, poking me in the chest. “You didn’t tell me…”

“That yes, I had a life before you. You had a life before me. Do you want to talk about it?”

He bats that question aside with an angry gesture. “What kind of a savage would carve up your back like that? Was he punished?”

“It’s not as bad as it sounds,” I say, trying to soothe him with my hands on his shoulders, stroking gently. “He believed God was talking to him. One night he woke me up, saying ‘I have it, I have it!’ He was trying to understand something….If the equations God told him are true.”

“He had to cut your back to find that out?” Kylo is still boggling at me, teeth clenched.

“Well, it was complicated.” At the time, tattooing the equations into my back seemed like a perfectly reasonable thing to do, I forget why. “He’d nearly talked me into believing that people were coming to steal his secrets. People I couldn’t see. So he never wrote them down anywhere else.”

Kylo looks completely lost, so I try again. “Okay, I knew they weren’t real, but if humouring him would make his imaginary pursuers go away, I was all for it. He needed to put these secrets somewhere safer than his own mind, his computer, or a piece of paper. My back was that place. I was the watchman, after all. The protector.”

I see by Kylo’s stricken look that he understands. I have protected him from his nightmares too, after all.

“That’s what you do, isn’t it?” he muttered. “Protect the crazy ones.”

“Yes, but not just crazy. He was brilliant, you know. Anyway, for some reason I loved the idea. The secrets of the universe, on my back!”

Kylo looks sick. I shouldn’t have said that. Envy is a weird beast.

“You would have liked him,” I say lamely.

“Why? Because I’m crazy too?”

“Because he’s the funniest man you’d ever meet. He'd even make you laugh.”

Kylo rolls away from me, slamming one hand down on the bed with unnecessary force. “Tell me about your brilliant, funny _husband_ , then. Who I didn’t know existed until a minute ago.”

“Hey, you could have asked about my past, any time,” I say. There’s a sulky silence from Kylo, so I continue. “Anyway, we had a needle and some ink. I told him to get me another drink, and I’d let him do it.”

Long silence from Kylo. Finally he asks, “Did it hurt?”

“It hurt, but he was as gentle as he could be, and for some reason we were both so funny that night. I don’t remember the pain nearly as much as the laughter. Until I sobered up. ‘How long is this thing?, I asked him. Once I realised the equations were going to cover most of my body, I got up and ran off. Now we’ll never know whether God was telling my husband the truth or not.”

“You had a husband, and I didn’t know,” he mutters. He sits up so he can glare down at me.

I have always kept that part of me separate, and when Kylo was still reading my mind, he seemed to avoid it instinctively. Too much emotion for him. “I wouldn’t lie to you. You just didn’t ask.”

That, for some reason, makes him relax. “You don’t lie, no,” he says thoughtfully.

Hah, but I do misdirect! All this talk of my ex is making Kylo grind his teeth, and with luck he’ll be too hung up on my past to see what I’m planning for my immediate future. “Anyway, that was pretty much the final straw. I was so embarrassed the next day. And hung over. And bleeding everywhere. What a stupid thing to do.”

A snort from Kylo.

“That was a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, Kylo.”

More sulky silence. Time to change the subject. I don’t want to think of my ex, sitting among a pile of books somewhere, his long, thin back curved into a question mark. Thinking, writing. Trying to understand how to reach through time and space.

“Time’s a funny concept,” I say. “Did you know know you can still see Alderaan from the Finalizer? You just need a strong enough telescope.”

“It was blown up thirty years ago,” he says, looking horrified for some reason.

“I know. We were in history class and they were telling us about it. So I reminded them we’re more than thirty light years away, so duh, of course we can still see it. But from here, you probably wouldn’t see any people on it yet ‘cos we’d be looking too far back in time.”

Kylo’s lips are moving but he isn’t saying anything aloud for a moment, lost in some memory. Something awful, from the looks of things. Then he snaps out of it, giving me a sour look. “Did you get a gold star from your teacher for that little gem?”

“Yes,” I say. “Gold star for my understanding of sublight physics. And fifty demerit points for disrespect. Remember I spent a week polishing stormtrooper armour before breakfast? That was why.”

“If you really want to succeed as a cadet, I wish you all the luck in the world. You’re going to need it,” Kylo says. It’s a surprisingly generous comment from him.

“Well. I wish you all the luck in the world with…whatever you’re trying to achieve,” I say.

His look darkens. “I have my own destiny,” he says. But then he smiles at me, wholly in the present. “That will come in its own time, though. In the meantime, as you like to say, ‘I will enjoy’.”

I’m still laughing at the way he’s mimicked my accent when he reaches for me again, burying his nose in my hair and cupping his hands on my breasts. At once I’m on fire, one last time.


	33. I Want Her Gone!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ouch.
> 
> * * *

The sound of the door sighing shut wakes him, or maybe it’s a breath of air from the corridor outside. He reaches a hand out to touch the warm space next to him in the bed. Already cooling.

_So quick to betray me. You really couldn’t wait, could you?_

He reaches out with his Force senses. The girl that was in his arms a moment ago is passing through the Finalizer’s decks like a comet, leaving a trail of excitement and intention he couldn’t possibly miss. _Look at you, trying to steal your way off this ship. Are you a pirate after all?_ The memory of her in his arms makes him smile, and yet he’s angry, too. It should be his decision to leave, not hers. _Is there anyone I can like and not also hate?_

Kylo’s always sensed how some people live with a kind of magnetic force inside them, a compass that keeps them pointed in one direction. Hux, Phasma, and obviously Snoke, all have that certainty. It's enviable. The girl was not like that, when Kylo met her. She turned to him and was content to follow in his wake. But over the past weeks something has grown in her, and yesterday he felt it coalesce into that same kind of lodestone that he’s seen in others.

 _Of course_ he didn’t read her mind. Snoke’s clearly forbidden that. Nonetheless the ghost of their old connection lingers. When it flares up, it’s like seeing her naked body. He can’t not look.

_Something on Snoke’s planet changed you._

Yes, but then the journey changed him, too. Without her begging him to show her more of the galaxy, would he have gone to Jakku and had the vision of that other girl? It changes everything, that she is somewhere in his future. Right now she's striding confidently across the sands of Jakku towards their rendezvous. Or maybe Jakku is just where they meet. Perhaps she is the queen of some planetary court, the powerful leader of a hidden cult. Powerful, enigmatic, and beautiful. He believes it. Snoke has seen it too. Even Talks-to-Ghosts spoke of a girl. _We will see all things, all things changed._ Reverence in his voice.

Kylo realises with a jolt that he’d been dreaming of Destiny Girl right before he woke up. It comes back to him now, fragments forming into memories: all night the tall girl walked at his side, leading him, going somewhere. All night, even as he held his lover in his arms, his dreams were of another.

_So, girl. So we betray each other._

He tries to remember the details of his dream, but as before, its power lies in the feelings it gives him. The girl with the staff, standing over him in the hot desert light. He can’t see her features against the sun, but when she reaches down to take his hand, he thinks he will faint from the contact.

The personal holopad on Kylo’s desk jerks him out of his reverie with an angry buzz. When it switches on, he’s surprised to see Snoke. Reduced to that size, he looks disturbingly insectile. Kylo pushes that observation aside hurriedly. “Shall we speak in the holochamber?”

“We _can’t!_ I’m contacting you through my personal holopad on board my ship, and it doesn’t connect with the holochamber.”

“Why are you on your…?”

“Because my palace has been _destroyed._ Flooded. All its electrical and communications systems shorted out and burned up!”

“Master! Are you under attack? Where shall I…? I’ll contact the Knights, and we’ll…Oh.”

Snoke’s drumming his fingers angrily on his knees. His glare suggests he’s waiting for Kylo to figure something out, so Kylo tries a different tack. “The stronghold was built on a freshwater spring. Built where it was _because_ of the spring…”

Snoke cuts him off with an angry gesture, his mouth working through a series of snarls as though he can’t find which words to spit out first. Finally he grates out through bared teeth, “My palace was destroyed by a _plumbing disaster!”_

Kylo rubs his face, trying to wake up properly. Dreams….With sudden energy he says, “Maybe my Force dreams about building a city are not just a metaphor. Maybe we do have to _literally_ build our own city.” The idea catches him up with its promise and he leans over the holopad, his hands clenching the desk in front of him. “I know your stronghold was once a noble palace. It’s... painful to see it fall into ruin. A ... loss of so much history. Tragic. But maybe we could build something better. A new centre of the galaxy!”

Snoke is not swept up by Kylo’s enthusiasm, however. Anything but. He holds up something for Kylo to see. Squinting at what tiny holographic Snoke has in his tiny hands, Kylo can just make out a tiny pair of boots.

Snoke seems to have recovered his voice. “Recognise these?”

“No,” says Kylo, though he realises, with a sinking heart, that he might. They look like standard First Order issue cadet boots.

Snoke’s voice has turned icy. “When I saw the state of the lower levels, I deployed some of the spring system’s submarine maintenance drones to find what was blocking the outlet.” Snoke pauses, and Kylo has time to wonder, for the thousandth time, what Snoke does all day, that he could fail to notice his home filling up with water. It does rather support Slasheye’s hibernation theory.

“I don’t think these boots could fit you or any of the Knights of Ren,” Snoke spits at last, balancing them on the palm of his elongated hand. “But they _would_ fit a human woman. One about the size of the girl you brought with you.”

“The boots were in the spring?” Kylo asks, playing for time. _Of course. The Knights threw her down a well. She found a way to raise the water level._ He feels sick. Why hadn’t he asked her how she escaped?

“YES, the boots were in the well. Along with most of a cadet uniform,” says Snoke. “Wrapped up together and stuffed into the outlet pipe.” Snoke shoots his arm out to point at Kylo, raising his voice to a tinny roar that the holoprojector can barely handle. “That beastly, nasty, vicious, sneaky, loathsome little slut! I want her gone. Eliminated. Rubbed out of this galaxy. Do you understand?”

“Yes, Master.”

“Do it NOW!” Overloaded, the speaker on the holoprojector conks out with a screech.

“Yes, Master.”

The holoprojector switches off.

Kylo reaches for his lightsaber.


	34. Ka mate! Ka mate!

I slipped out of Kylo’s room before first watch. I wanted to plant a last kiss on those lips that had fallen into a loose pout as he slept. But I was afraid to wake him, so I left him, a long-limbed shadow among the shadows of the room.

The first thing I do is wake Liise, who has the room next to mine in the cadet barracks. “I’m not well. I’m going to the medbay,” I tell her. She mumbles something about letting Lieutenant Sala know, and I stagger away coughing spectacularly. I’m not sure whether I have pneumonia or a gammy leg, also I’m prone to over-acting. Just so long as nobody questions where I am this morning...

Then I’m running through the empty halls to the dry dock where the First Order’s newest acquisition is awaiting its test flights.

The dry dock is silent and empty, as I’d hoped. Just the ship we’ve been working on, looming above me. My pirate ship. I walk over briskly, trying to look official for any watching cameras, and tap in the hatch code we’ve been using. The ramp lowers, and I give a sigh of relief. I’d feared the codes might have changed already, now the ship’s been handed off from the cadets.

I run into the cockpit and stand, panting, looking at the navcomp. There’s a new facing on it, a First Order standard rig with markings in Aurabesh. But we’ve done this all over the ship - put First Order skins on the original Kibnon workings. I take another gulp of air and turn on the navcomp. It lights up in Aurabesh. I flick through the menus until I reach Recents.

How far do Recents go? I hadn’t dared to ask Kylo. It would make my intention too obvious.

The screen gives me a list of choices. The names are still in Kibnon, so I can’t read them. The coordinates, I can recognise, in a general sense: we’ve been learning basic astrography. Hardly daring to breathe, I scroll back. It would be almost two years ago, I think. Does the navcomp’s memory go back that far?

And there it is. A set of coordinates that are so far off the usual spread that they might as well be gibberish. They might, to a casual observer, register as some sort of glitch. Somewhere not even in this galaxy.

I’m whisper-screaming, punching my fists in the air. The way home! All I need to do is wait until somebody is sitting in the pilot’s chair, and…

Best not think of that. Only sheer adrenaline will get me through the next few hours. There’s no time to waste. The lights in the dry dock are coming up, readying for dayshift.

I know this ship. I’ve helped provision it with water and standard rations for long range missions. I know the armaments rack is full. I empty it out and hide the blasters in one of the holds, all except for one that I strap to my arm. There’s a life support suit cupboard in the bulkhead behind the cockpit. I have the First Order’s equivalent of duct tape - it’s exactly like duct tape - and I use it to stick down the latch so the door won’t lock. Pulling it shut, I settle down to wait in the dark. It still smells like cockroaches.

An eternity later I hear the hatch open. Somebody says, “Yes, the fuel was topped up full last shift.” There’s no reply, but I hear heavy footsteps coming up the ramp. Just one pair of feet. That’s a relief. I wasn’t sure I’d have the nerve to confront more.

A moment later I hear the hatch hiss shut again, and somebody’s weight drops into the pilot’s chair, which creaks in protest. My pilot.

I hope he or she is not too fond of life in the Finalizer, because we’re never coming back.

I decide to wait until we’ve taken off and moved well clear of the star destroyer before I come out. My first move will be to shoot out the comms panel. It’s vital no message leaves this ship. Hopefully I’ll show I mean business when I do that. I thumb the blaster controls nervously. If I have the range set wrong then I’ll end up punching a hole in the hull.

My weapons training seems pitiful. Handling a blaster is far from instinctive for me. I’ve never threatened a person with violence in my life. I hear the toggles being flicked on at the control panel, and the sudden vibration of the ship’s engines travels from the soles of my feet to the pit of my stomach. I feel sick. The ship lurches upwards, and my stomach lurches in sympathy. I break out in a cold sweat.

 _This is useless._ I can’t go out there a shaking mess and expect the pilot to obey my orders, blaster or no blaster. If the pilot resists, I’ll have to be ruthless. Hurt them somehow. Make them scream with pain, if necessary.

I don’t know how people do this. How can I find the courage?

 

My family used to laugh at me when I talked about our warrior ancestors. I have a sudden memory of my mother saying drily, “You could literally defend your thesis. When it comes to your viva voce, take a weapon. You can club Professor McLlaren to death if he decides to fail you.”

“What about our bookworm ancestors? We have as many of those,” my father would say. “Five generations of paper-pushers on your father’s side. And florists. What are you going to do in a fight, stab somebody with a pen?”

“Talk them to death, probably,” my brother would say.

That’s not going to work here. Though the memory of my family helps; I miss their gentle mockery, their warmth, their laughter. I want to see them again so badly, and all I have to do is hijack this ship. I have a blaster, and any minute I’m going to come bursting out of this cupboard, firing.

Once I can make my legs move.

They don’t want to. I’m shaking like a leaf. I feel the ship move, hear the engine’s rising note as it propels the ship out and away. Minutes pass, and I know we must be well clear of the Finalizer. And still I can’t move.

_I have a warrior ancestor. At least one._

And once, sought by his enemies, that man of my blood hid alone in a dark place, in fear of his life, just like this. Cunning and brave, waiting to come out into the light. While he waited, he made a song to raise his courage. A famous war chant.

 _Ka mate, ka mate_  
_Ka ora, ka ora_  
I may die, I may die,  
I may live, I may live

I repeat the words over and over in my mind, until with the last words, _Hupane! Kaupane!_ Step into the light! I throw the cupboard door open, leap forward, and shoot out the comms panel.

The blast bolt freezes in mid-air, defying all the laws of physics I know.

Then the pilot swivels his chair around to face me.

It’s Kylo Ren.


	35. Hanging in the Balance

 

After a moment, he dispels the power of the blaster bolt with a flick of his hand. Its energy disperses, a flush of warmth through the cockpit, gone in an instant. He allows himself a brief moment of satisfaction. He’s learning to control his Force powers so well. Snoke’s guidance is all the truth he needs.

The girl doesn’t try for a second shot. She’s not even pointing the blaster at him any more. Just standing there, staring, wide-eyed with shock. Kylo can see tremors running down her legs. She must be terrified. It’d be funny if, well, if it wasn’t _her._

“Where do you think you’re going?” he asks.

“Home.” Her voice makes that one word hang in the air, like the lowest note on a ship’s engine, when it is straining to raise itself from the ground. Something plucks at his chest in response. Home. The same note would like to sound in him, but it can’t. There’s just a sort of sick twisting sensation under his ribs.

_There is no home for me. Not like that, the hope shining in her eyes._

The lightsaber’s grip is already in his hands, but instead of igniting it immediately, he tosses it from one hand to another. He’s done this before, and watched the courage drain out of his opponents, hypnotised by the movement. Watched them run through their options, and realise they have none. She’s there already: she knows she can’t fight him. This should be quick, now.

But his hands keep moving, and the lightsaber keeps falling into his left palm, then his right. Everything is quiet; he’s brought the ship to a halt. The Finalizer’s lights are a tiny constellation off their port viewscreen, barely visible against the static points of the stars.

The only other movement is the girl’s eyes, tracking the lightsaber’s arc from left to right and back again.

“Tell me what you did to Snoke’s stronghold,” Kylo asks at last.

“What?”

“Snoke’s stronghold. It’s flooded.”

The blood rises to her face. Anger, or shame at being caught, he can’t tell. “I’m sorry! Your Knights threw me into a well. The only way I could get out was to raise the water level!” She’s almost gabbling, she’s so frightened. Then she pulls herself together before continuing. “What would _you_ have done? Let yourself drown? Is that what I was supposed to do?”

“Why didn’t you _tell_ anyone you’d blocked the outlet?” he says furiously, because that is the real crime. Kylo himself would have done worse things, if anyone had thrown him in a well. But there’s no excuse for concealing the fact afterwards.

She won’t meet his eyes for a moment, then rallies. “Haven’t you ever wanted revenge? They tried to _kill_ me!”

“What kind of sneaky, cowardly revenge was that?”

“Well look at me. What do you think I’m going to do? Walk up to the Knights and punch them in the face?” she says. She springs to life, dancing on her toes and throwing shadow-punches at imaginary enemies for a moment. “How stupid would that be?”

“Well it’s not their palace, so your revenge was just useless vandalism.”

She slumps against the rear bulkhead, her burst of manic energy gone. “Revenge often goes wrong like that. Have you noticed?” she says, rather sadly.

Kylo refuses to be drawn in. Because that’s what she’ll do: suck him into a rambling debate on morals or justice or, worst of all, human psychology. She’s _definitely_ in the wrong, and that’s what he needs to focus on. “Do you know how long that place has stood there? You ignorant savage, you don’t even know the history you’ve destroyed because of your pathetic need for _revenge!”_ he spits.

He should end it now. Snoke’s shown him his future. He’ll need a cool heart and a clear head to grasp it. Ruthless. This little death is only a step on the way. He should see it as a form of practice.

The thought makes him sick, but such sicknesses are necessary to pare away weakness. That has always been the way.

His lightsaber hilt flips from hand to hand, and she watches it.

“You could take me,” she says, breaking into his thoughts.

“What?”

“Take me home.”

“Why by all the flames of Mustafar would I do _that?”_ But his heart leaps in his chest, something struggling to respond to her yearning for _home home home!_

“Because it’ll be amazing! Don’t you want to know how far this ship can jump?” She’s trying to beguile him with that cursed enthusiasm of hers. Her voice still has that thrilling note to it, and something in him wants to respond. “It knows how to jump further than anything else you’ve ever flown, I bet,” she says, eyes shining. She takes a step towards him, arms outspread to encompass the distances she’s imagining. She seems to have forgotten she’s holding a blaster.

Kylo makes a lighting-fast leap out of his chair and snatches the weapon out of her hand. Rather belatedly she dances back out of reach. Now they’re both standing on opposite sides of the cabin, breathing a little harder. Kylo clips the blaster to his belt and hefts the hilt of his lightsaber, feeling its familiarity against his palm.

But the girl makes her hands into fists and beats the air as though frustrated by something obvious he’s not seeing. _But aren’t we lovers?_ “No, no, no! I wasn’t going to shoot you! You must know that!”

“Well you’re certainly not going to now.” Oddly enough, he does feel more relaxed once she’s not facing him with a weapon, no matter how unlikely she was to use it. It’s less…oppositional. More comfortable, even. He leans back against the plasteel wall, folding his arms.

She mimics his pose and snorts. “Yeah. Well. Look, I know Snoke must be furious. But I bet he mostly just wants me gone.”

“He wants you eliminated.” Even to himself, his voice feels false. Somehow, the hilt of the lightsaber keeps travelling from hand to hand, as though it resists its own purpose.

“Well you can eliminate me from this galaxy by taking me somewhere else,” says the girl. “What would he care what happens to me, so long as I’m out of the way?”

“Why would I disobey his orders?”

“Why would you do what he asks?”

“Because he’s my master.”

“Why is that?”

“Because he understands who I am, and who I can be,” he says furiously, glaring at her. “With powers like mine, you can’t imagine what it was like. Growing up with people who are terrified of what I’ll become. Terrified they can’t control me. That I won’t be able to control myself.” His voice turns hard and high, mocking. “‘Tamp it down, rein it in.’ That’s all I ever heard. When what I needed to learn was how to _connect._ To understand.”

She lets out a kind of gasp of laughter, clapping her hand over her mouth immediately as though appalled at herself. “I have had this _exact same conversation_ with my ex. Not that he had the Force…” She shakes her head, staring at him.

“Stop it,” he hisses. “I’m nothing like him.”

“Needing to connect to the mysteries,” she said, ignoring him. Staring past him in fact, into some memory. “People thought his trying understand it all was destroying him. But he had to be who he was, and search for his truth.”

“Who are you talking about?”

“My ex, of course. Who I want to save, if I can.” She gives him a look of open appeal. “I only left him to go for a walk. He was in hospital, and I needed to clear my mind! I never meant to be gone for two years!”

_Does she want my pity? This has to stop!_

“That’s not my concern. You really don’t know who I am, do you?” he asks, taking a step towards her. “Let me tell you.” Two steps, and he can lean over her, one hand braced on the wall on either side of her shoulders so she’s trapped. Much like that strange moment they had on the Finalizer, when she was fixing the windows of his cabin. She looks up at him with the same wary calculation, weighing up how things are going to go when she is so outmatched.

“My grandfather was born a slave,” Kylo says. “But he was also born with unimaginable Force powers, and a great destiny was laid before him.”

The girl nods, watching him intently. She is the most attentive listener, and Kylo feels compelled to continue. “In his time, he became the most feared warrior of his time, a leader who would bring order to the galaxy.”

“The Empire?” she whispers, wide-eyed.

“Yes, the Empire. But everything he fought for was destroyed by…by my uncle. This galaxy is in chaos once more. My Master sees this, the First Order sees it. It is my destiny to finish my grandfather’s work. Not only politically, but by bringing the Force under control.”

“How can you do that?” she asks, and he finds himself telling her about Snoke and the Knights of Ren, and their research into ancient artefacts and Force practices. At the word “research”, the girl stiffens like a loth-hound on the hunt. She has questions. She wants details. Facts. Hypotheses. Evidence.

When he finishes talking, she says nothing. He straightens up - he’s standing far too close to her - and realises he’s bracing for the usual reactions he gets when he talks about himself and his abilities. His mother, haranguing him. His father storming out. His uncle Luke withdrawing into fretful, tongue-biting silence, or people like Lor San Tekka laying on the guilt. And more recently, Hux and his crew giving him that sneer that shows their impatience with what they see as pointless mystical obsessions.

But the girl just nods, her eyes wide and curious. Taking him in, the whole of him, without judgement. It’s almost disorienting, that acceptance, and Kylo feels something loosening inside him, under that interested gaze. The hilt of the lightsaber hangs loose in his hands.

Finally she says, “Wow. I had no idea. That’s quite a future. All mapped out. Your gifts…are you sure your master isn’t just using them for himself?”

“At least I serve. I’m useful. Not…a freak.”

Somehow her curiosity has forced that word out of him, and he shoots her a glance, shame burning in him. But she merely nods again and asks cautiously, “Is this what you want right now? Being a leader, a commander? Or would you like one last adventure…?”

“I have my duty,” he says woodenly.

Again, she says nothing. Her whole body is her answer; still and soft, full of the life pounding in her veins. He can feel it through the Force as clearly as he can feel his own. He’s let himself get too close to her mind…He’s nearly touching her thoughts, and she, with her blazing, fierce curiosity, is practically touching his.

When he walked in on the cadets’ culture hour yesterday and seen her leading that war dance, he’d felt joy. _Joy!_ That she could bring something so bizarre into the Finalizer! He knows that Hux has reprimanded Lieutenant Sala severely for allowing that kind of anarchy among his cadets. It’s only a matter of time before the First Order crushes the spirit out of the girl too.

Outside the viewport, the Finalizer’s lights sparkle like a false promise. What a miserable place it is. Kylo feels a longing rise in him. _To be free, even for a time, from that joyless place._

“You told the First Order you wanted to take this ship for its maiden test flight, didn’t you?” she asks softly. “Who’ll question where you decide to go?”

When she speaks to him like this, his future looks like a narrowing pathway, hemmed in by the leaden walls of duty. It darkens to the final, heaviest blow he must strike, somewhere in the time to come, to seal him to his fate. Such a strict, painful gate to the life of power he’s been promised, with its glorious and grave purposes, and the mysterious girl with the Force.

A destiny laid out before his feet since before he was born, Snoke says. _This_ girl is in the way.

“All right. It’s probably for the best,” she says quietly. “It was selfish of me, trying to get home this way. Telling you where we live.” She’s staring at the navcomp.

Of course, the coordinates are stored there, in the “recents” file. The location of a whole unexploited planet, far away and unknown to the rest of the galaxy. A valuable secret. He’d known that from the beginning. How much more valuable, if he can go there with a native guide, and return?

He’s promised his master a lifetime of service. But first...The thought of one last adventure, away from the Finalizer with its thousand eyes and their cold judgement, makes something come untethered inside him. How light he feels, even imagining the weight of his duties and obligations dropping away. _To be free of them for a moment!_

Suddenly the blood is racing through his veins. _Surely Snoke’s plans can wait a few more weeks._

Abruptly he tosses her blaster in the air, whips out his lightsaber and slices it in two. The girl jumps in terror, but he laughs, grabbing her by the arm and swinging her into the copilot’s seat. He gives her a shake and waves a hand in front of her face, because she seems too shocked to move. “Listen! You don’t get to keep the ship. I’m dropping you off and taking her back home afterwards,” he says.

“Well, ah, good,” she gulps faintly at last. “Arriving back with everything I’ve learned will make me a hero. Bringing you as well would be a disaster.”

He sees himself through her eyes for a second: a dangerous, powerful wild card, the worst thing she could release on her powderkeg world, and his heart swells. It is no small thing, after all, to have such power. He feels almost giddy.

“I might decide to take over. A whole planet to myself,” he says lightly, because suddenly everything seems possible.

She bares her teeth in a mock snarl, quick as ever to catch his mood. “Back on my homeworld they’re still wondering if there’s intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. I’d rather not bring you as the evidence!”

A bark of laughter escapes him. Nobody else would say this to him, _nobody!_ She gives him a sidelong glance, pleased that she’s amused him.

“Did you give the ship a name?” he asks, sobering up.

“Yes I did,” she says. “Matahorua. It’s a ship that travelled a long way and discovered a new land, and returned home.”

“Matahorua.” The word is strange on his tongue. From what strange world does she bring such a name? Time to find out. “All right. Let’s see how far she can jump.”


	36. A Spring Night Far, Far Away

He leans over her seat as she brings up “Recents” on the navcomp menu. “There,” she says, pointing to one entry.

The coordinates look meaningless. Kylo frowns, and scrolls to the preceding jumps. _“These_ I understand. They’re in the Cularin system. Well _that_ makes sense. It’s always been a pirate stronghold. This ship may have spent a lot of time there.” One of his father’s freebooter stories pops into his head, unbidden. “Strange place. Do you know, the whole kriffing system disappeared once? But something’s off….”

“The _system_ disappeared?”

He’s not in a mood to talk about Cularin’s history, though, least of all where it touches on his father’s stories. Kylo turns to the nav console and brings up the ship’s charts, making sectors of the galaxy light up in a holographic display under the girl’s fascinated gaze. “Here. The pirates lined up for the big jump from here.” He points to the star chart floating in the air between them. “It’s a region near the comet ring called The Squeezes. It’s not well mapped. Ships disappear there.” He gives her a sharp look.

“Well, I think I know _one_ place they can go.” She’s simmering with excitement. She really believes this is the way home.

He must have looked dubious, because she leans past him to a section of the control panel that he’s not familiar with. “Look, here. This is what the Finalizer’s engineers were so excited about. It’s not the ship’s hyperdrive that is special, though it is made for longer jumps than usual. The real difference is in these circuits. They’re tied into the shielding in a way they’ve never seen before. As far as I could follow what the engineers were saying, these systems interact with the hyperspace thing…what did you call it? What this place has, that you call The Squeezes?”

“Anomalies,” he says, fingering the big toggle switch at the centre of the panel. His Force senses prickle the way the often do when he’s navigating or flying at the limit of his abilities. Excitement.

“Strap in,” he says, dropping into the pilot’s seat. He works at the controls until the ship’s engines ramp up to a high whine. A second later the view outside flashes into blue, and they’re in hyperspace. He glances over at the girl. Her face is rapt, eyes shining in the stellar glare.

* * *

They learn the reason why The Squeezes are so named when they go through them. Shortly after punching in the coordinates from the Matahorua’s last known launch point in the Cularin system, their view of hyperspace changes. The orderly streaks of starlight in their viewport become unstable. Kylo feels the hairs rise on the back of his neck as he watches them buckle and tighten around them into a noose of light, unbearably bright.

“What’s happening?” asks the girl, riding in the copilot’s seat beside him.

“I don’t know. I’ve never seen this before,” he says, scanning the readouts in front of him.

A dozen alarms go off all over the ship, and every panel creaks and shudders as though some tremendous force is about to crush it. The shielding flares red, and the alarms scream that it is starting to collapse on them.

“Now! Now! Do something! Hit the switch thing!” shrieks the girl, gripping her seatbelt as though it could save her from being smeared into her component atoms.

Kylo doesn’t need any prompting. His Force instincts are telling him the same thing, and the heavy switch on the modified control panel has suddenly lit up green. He reaches for it and slaps it down.

A narrow funnel appears in front of them, and a second later, it’s as though space itself spits their ship through it like a pip. The readouts in front of Kylo go crazy. When they settle, the view out of the transparisteel is of normal hyperspace. The alarms go silent.

Kylo laughs and hits his armrest.

“What’s funny?” asks the girl, who is still white-faced.

“We’re still alive!” he says, flashing her a quick grin before turning back to the control panel. “None of our readouts make any sense at all, though.”

“I don’t know what I just saw,” says the girl. She consults her datapads for a moment, shrugs, and gives up. “I don’t think that sort of travel’s described in here anywhere. It’s like we warped a warp. I do remember the ship’s alarms going off on the way back to your galaxy when I was kidnapped, so I guess that was when we came through the Squeezes in the other direction.”

Kylo checks over the ship’s systems. Everything seems intact, and they appear to be back in normal hyperspace. “Three standard days and we drop into sublight,” he says. The girl sighs happily, leaning back in her seat.

* * *

Once, lying in his arms during the voyage, she asks, “Where’s home for you? Is it just the Finalizer, always?”

“I can never go home,” he whispers. He kisses her hair, taking comfort in its softness and familiar scent.

She asks no more questions, merely says, “You’ll build your own home, one day”. She’s right, he thinks, with a pang of sadness. Her home will be full of people, laughter, kin. Unlike his. But she wouldn’t understand about the dark shining city under the stars, beautiful and terrible, the reigning seat of the Empire to come. The queenly girl by his side, potent with the Force.

His dreams are better now. He sees less of the burning city and Exar Kun’s predatory grin, _you’re one of us now._ They’re replaced by more visions of the mysterious girl on Jakku, crossing some windy silent plain alone. Does she live there? Maybe she’s the daughter of a great Jedi he will have to defeat. How will he win her over then, if she’s a lightsider?

And one dream…

He wakes with a start, feeling that the real girl in his arms has entered his dreamworld. But she’s awake. She moves his hair away from his forehead with gentle fingers. “Everything okay?”

“Yes.” He nearly doesn’t tell her. He hasn’t told her about his visionary dreams. But she’s _in_ this one.

“I dreamed of you,” he says, and feels her smile in the dark, against his skin.

“Really? Was it a good dream?”

“I don’t know. You were with a man. He had paint on his skin, all the way up his arms.”

“In lines? Curling lines?”

“Yes,” says Kylo.

“Tattoos. That’s what they’re _meant_ to look like, not the mess on my back. Was he tall and skinny? What colour hair?”

“Yes. Brown hair. Straight.”

He knows it’s her ex. Knew it in the dream, even. The way the girl’s breath catches now confirms it.

“What happened?”

“You were both standing by a window. He put his arms around you. And then he lifted the equations off your back. The tattoos. In the dream, there were lots of them. Much more than you have on your back. They were written in light, and he just…peeled them off you somehow.”

“Oh!” She’s laughing and crying at the same time. “He had them in his head all along. I wish _I’d_ had this dream. What happened next?”

“It’s hard to explain,” says Kylo, frowning. “You had your datapads, and you held them up to the equations. I don’t know, it’s like they were hanging in mid-air or something. And the two things joined together. His equations, and the ones in the datapads. They made a whole.”

The girl gasps. “Oh, I _knew_ it. I was always meant to come home!”

Her joy is an exquisite pain for Kylo, but he continues anyway. “There was a little girl. She took them from you and wrapped them around herself like a cloak. She ran off, and her feet left the ground. She flew.” He smiles, remembering the child’s laughter, her heart-shaped face flushed with delight, her curly hair bouncing around her shoulders. Just like her mother’s. But her eyes had been a startling light grey against her tawny skin, and Kylo was relieved to find nothing of his own features in her. The child’s life would be interesting enough without his gifts.

“Is it a true dream? Like one of Talks-to-Ghosts’ dreams?”

“It feels like it.”

“Oh! Oh! Oh! I love you!” She drums on his chest with her fists, laughing.

“Stop it!” He pushes her away. “I thought you loved _him!_ Isn’t this why we’re taking you home?”

“Well of course!” She sobers up after a moment. “There is a love for each season,” she says. “And I don’t love him any the less for loving you.”

“What’s he going to think, though?” Kylo’s never understood how she can be so careless about her ex’s feelings.

“He’s a realist,” she says. “And I’ve moved heaven and earth to return to him. With these.” She reaches over to rest her fingers on the datapads beside their bunk. “Time, light and gravity,” she says reverently.

* * *

A blue world hangs in the front viewport. He can see why the sight of Codia had made her homesick. They are very similar. The girl is squashed up against the transparisteel in just the same way as she’d done on the Finalizer. Now it’s her homeworld turning below them.

“Your air is dirty,” he says, because the strength of her feelings is starting to hurt. _Home home home._ She’s like a navigation beacon that can’t be switched off. An insistent pulse of light.

“Well, about that. We need better technology,” she says, smiling dreamily. “I think we’ll have that, soon.” The look she gives him is filled with warmth. “I come, bearing gifts.”

“Get your knee off that panel. You’ll switch something on.”

She starts to climb off the dashboard, and knocks one of the comms switches. It must be tuned to one of the electromagnetic bands, because it picks up something right away, a flare of static with barely discernible words. The girl drops quickly into the copilot’s seat and fiddles excitedly with the controls. “They gave us a week’s training on comms…let’s see….”

A swirl of alien music, swift and enticing. Another, different, weirdly beautiful.

“Oh!” She turns to him, smiling, eyes shining with tears. “I don’t know these. They will have written so many new ones while I was gone.” That note in her voice once more, as though she can tune into the bass notes of the universe, and they are joy itself. Again, there’s a struggle in his heart to respond.

He can’t, not now. He reaches forward and spins the dial a little further. Abruptly, the cabin’s filled with a man’s voice. An alien language.

The girl leans forward, delighted and appalled. “Oh, _he’s_ still around, is he? Hah!” She snorts. “Of all the voices to hear first, honestly.” She mimes vomiting, then laughs and holds up her datapads. “Politicians. I’m going to explode their minds. It’ll be glorious, Kylo.”

This is going to be so much harder than he thought. “Where do you want to be dropped off?” he asks tersely.

She gives him a sympathetic look, reading his reluctance. He could do without that, too. “I’m not coming with you!” he snaps. It’s himself he needs to convince, though.

“I know,” she says, more serious now. But happy enough to consider a future without Kylo in it. It’s galling.

She leans over to the viewport at the world rolling below. There seems to be nothing but water on this side. “It’ll be coming in sight soon. Islands.” She watches hungrily. “There they are!”

Long shapes in the ocean, green islands catching white drifts of cloud. The girl reaches for his hand, too overcome to speak.

“We should land at night,” he says, when she’s finished sniffling.

“What if people see us coming anyway, and try to shoot us down?”

“We’re shielded. Pick a landing spot.” Kylo sets the ship to hover over her homeland. The evening terminator is some way away around the curve of the globe. They still have some hours together.

She reaches over for the surface imagers and zeroes in on the landscape under them. “How much space do we need to land?” she asks absently. Her face is avid, scanning the houses and trees and fields so far below.

It’s not an unusual planet, Kylo thinks. Light industrial. Coming out of hyperspace, he’s seen how the night side is filled with the lights of cities.

“I can see my parent’s house!” she says, her finger trembling as she points to one of the thousand square rooftops of a harbour city. He sneaks a look at her. She’s smiling and crying, and he knows she is lost to him.

“Land here on this hilltop,” she says eventually. “It’s about fifteen minutes walk from the nearest houses, and I can walk home. We can come in over farmland from the west. Maybe nobody will notice us at night.” She gives him a tremulous smile. “When you leave, though, fly low over the city and light up the sky. I want everyone to know I arrived in a spaceship!”

Kylo goes to sit on the armrest of her chair, which sags under his weight. She’s almost vibrating with excitement. “Calm down,” he says, putting an arm around her. Wishing he didn’t feel these pangs of envy.

They decide to wait until nearly dawn before landing. They sleep, and make love one last time. She is solemn and tender, and her eyes never leave his face.

Later as they drift high above the surface, looking through the imager, Kylo sees a thousand small towns he could have chosen to live and grow old and die in. Where he could be her boyfriend. He could brush her ex aside easily enough, if he chose to. He has the Force, after all. He could have chosen to live among ordinary people with their quaint hydrocarbon technology _. A dog and a condo…._ he plucks the thought straight from her mind, in her unfamiliar language.

He’d be enmeshed in her family, which is large. How he would hate that.

The hilltop she’s chosen for landing is some sort of old gun emplacement, she tells him. Kylo brings the ship down sweet and easy, and hits the button to open the hatch. The girl takes his hand and leads him out of the cockpit and down to the entry dock, where the cool night air rolls in, loaded with alien scents. Somewhere a creature is making sharp, staccato calls of alarm. _Dog,_ he reads in her mind. They stand together, looking at the lights of the city shining below.

The girl takes a deep breath. “Spring,” she says. “Or early winter.”

“They say you know the air of your home planet in the first breath. And the season,” he says. She nods and leans against him, watching the first stripes of dawn define the jagged line of hills across the harbour. An ululating noise rises up from the city below.

The sound of sirens is the same on every world, Kylo thinks. They’ve been seen, and soon people will come looking.

The girl cocks her head at the sound. “The airport radars probably picked us up, even if nobody saw us. People will be here soon.” But she doesn’t move to go.

She looks up at him as though drinking him in, and his heart expands in his chest at her expression. She is so close to asking him to stay. The words are on the tip of her tongue, he knows, so near that he can taste them. And so he kisses her one last time, to savour the life he might have had with her. _A dog and a condo…_

He pulls away. “Do you think he’s still waiting for you?”

She gives him a sidelong glance and nods sharply. “Yes. You dreamed it.”

He’s still her magic man. She believes in him. It’s surprising how much that thought warms him.

“I wish I could have given you more,” she says.

“You did. I know who I am, now.” A starlord, a wizard, a magic man. He realises suddenly that he’ll never reveal this planet’s location to the First Order. He’ll even lie to Snoke. Because no matter what his destiny makes of him, he will be remembered here as a good man.

She turns to him. “Be with me, one last time. It was so amazing. I will never have anything like that again.” She taps her head to show what she means. To link, once more, through the Force. “Be with me.”

And so he does. A lifetime of summers and winters, friends, laughter, arguments, mathematics, the wilderness, swimming in rivers, the sharp cold of the sea, the strange man with the tattoos on his wrists…

She is frightened. One girl against a whole world. Just her, and the datapads she holds, which will be the doorway to the stars for everyone on this planet. She is the pivot of change.

As Kylo will be, for his world. The fulcrum of his galaxy. All things will hinge on him, and the girl with the staff…

The link between them dissolves and the girl steps back, giving him a curious look. “What girl?”

But he puts his fingers to her lips. She gives him a tearful smile then, all in a rush, turns to run down the ramp. He watches her walk lightfooted into the cool of the early morning, holding the secrets of star travel hugged to her chest.

A moment later he’s rising towards the gold bands of sunrise outlining the mountains beyond this alien city by the sea. He swoops down to circle her, a lone figure cutting a swathe through the dewy grass, before roaring over the city that will wake to find all things changed.

It will be a beautiful day.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * * *  
> The End
> 
>  
> 
> “It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to.”
> 
> This story was definitely like that. It was meant to be a funny little one-shot. Thanks for coming along for the journey, readers!
> 
> Hit the comment button, folks. It's good karma!


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